Some like it very hot

THE alligators sunning themselves on Louisiana's Avery Island breathe in air redolent of vinegar, hot peppers and salt—the three ingredients of Tabasco sauce. Though the condiment is sold in 165 countries and has been taken into space, every drop is aged, distilled and bottled on the island just as it has been since Edmund McIlhenny came up with the recipe in 1868.

His descendants own and operate McIlhenny Co., which manufactures Tabasco sauce in its famous little bottle. “Our sauce was first sold in old cologne bottles that had sprinkler tops and we kept the style,” notes Paul McIlhenny, the company's fourth generation chief executive, who took control in 1999.

Tradition is strong on Avery Island, not an island in the normal sense but a three-mile (5km) long dome of salt which is surrounded by marshland and has been owned by the conjoined Avery and McIlhenny clans since before the civil war. As if the whole island were a time capsule, the extended family still lives in their antebellum homes, and the farm and factory workers still live in a compound of company-subsidised cottages, known as “The Tango”. All around are fields of crimson peppers.

“The McIlhennys are known in these parts for their noblesse oblige,” says Nick Spitzer, a folklorist and professor of anthropology and American studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, 140 miles east of Avery Island. “They are old guard agrarians who believe in cultural and environmental conservation.”

The family maintains a 170-acre (70 hectare) botanical garden and nature preserve on the island. In a region where jobs are scarce, poorly paid and subject to the vagaries of the local oil and sugarcane industries, McIlhenny gives its employees full health and dental benefits as well as retirement plans.

“They take care of us and we take care of them,” said Kate Rogers, 66, who recently retired after working for 20 years at the company, most recently as a factory tour guide. Ms Rogers' parents both worked at McIlhenny—her father hunted alligators and her mother stirred the vats of fermenting pepper mash. She and her husband, who is a welder for the company, pay just $138 per month to rent their two-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage on Avery Island. Their daughter works in the company's sales department and their son works in the island's salt mine. “As a teenager, I guess maybe I thought of leaving the island,” Ms Rogers says. “But that didn't last long.”