Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco), and salt. It is produced by McIlhenny Company of Avery Island in south Louisiana, having been created over 150 years ago by Edmund McIlhenny. Although tabasco peppers were initially grown only on Avery Island, they are now primarily cultivated in Central America, South America and Africa. The Tabasco sauce brand also has multiple varieties including the original red sauce, habanero, chipotle, sriracha and Trinidad Moruga scorpion. Tabasco products are available in more than 195 countries and territories, and packaged in 36 languages and dialects. History According to the company's official history, Tabasco was first produced in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who moved to Louisiana around 1840. However, as Jeffrey Rothfeder's book McIlhenny's Gold points out, some of the McIlhenny Company's official history is disputed, and that the politician Maunsel White was producing a tabasco pepper sauce two decades before McIlhenny. A 2007 book review by Mark Robichaux of The Wall Street Journal quotes Rothfeder's book: "The story actually begins in the pre-Civil War era with a New Orleans plantation owner named Maunsel White, who was famous for the food served at his sumptuous dinner parties. Mr. White's table no doubt groaned with the region's varied fare—drawing inspiration from European, Caribbean, and Cajun sources—but one of his favorite sauces was of his own devising, made from a pepper named for its origins in the Mexican state of Tabasco. White added it to various dishes and bottled it for his guests. Although the McIlhennys have tried to dismiss the possibility, it seems clear now that in 1849, a full two decades before Edmund McIlhenny professed to discover the Tabasco pepper, White was already growing Tabasco chilies on his plantation." Rothfeder cited January 26, 1850, letter to the New Orleans Daily Delta newspaper crediting White as having introduced "Tobasco red pepper" (sic) to the southern United States and asserting that the McIlhenny was at least inspired by White's recipe. Jean Andrews, in her book "Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums", goes further to declare—citing United States Circuit Court testimony from 1922—that prior to his death in 1862, "White gave some [pepper] pods, along with his recipe, to his friend Edmund McIlhenny, during a visit to White's Deer Range Plantation." To distribute his, Edmund McIlhenny initially obtained unused cologne bottles from a New Orleans glass