Tabasco

Avery Island, near Lafayette, Louisiana

We begin Day Zero of our Cycle Zydeco bike, music and food tour with a stop at Avery Island – the actual home of Tabasco.

We had missed the memo that this iconic American brand was built right here in Louisiana.  There is a great factory tour and beautiful garden built by the family that started this business right after the civil war.  Did you know that the locally grown peppers are placed into oak barrels to ferment for up to three years before packaging?  I didn’t.  

We enjoyed trying out the dozen or more flavors, but skipped the scorpion chili’s at the end.

We caught up with fellow Cycle Zydeco participants, about 50 or so biked on down for the day, all from around the country.  A trio of women, also in the Cycle Zydeco group, approach us to ask if we had driven, and if so, could they catch a ride back to Lafayette since they had Uber’ed down.  We say sure and stuff our trunk full of the stuff which had been on the back seats.  A tight fit, but a fun hour long trip to hear the stories from these sisters originally from Long Island and now dispersed from Florida to Wyoming. 

Tomorrow the real biking begins.