Customer Reviews

MciIhenny's Gold

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I enjoyed the book and felt like I got a comprehensive history of the McIlhenny family and how they kept the company going. At some points the book was a bit slow but overall I enjoyed it and glad I read it. As a lover of tabasco sauce, it is a must read although I am not very impressed with the Mcilhenny family based on the facts noted in the book

Growing up 2 miles from Avery Island I never knew how famous the area was. Once I grew older and learned the importance of the area, I became very appreciative of the land, and what is produced at the island. I thought this book was very interesting. I know a lot of things about the island but not the old history of the island, and that's what I found to be so interesting. To learn how Edmund invented the sauce, and learning about the different chairman's of the company. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Avery Island and the famous Tabasco sauce.

This book was a remarkable revelation into the world of Tabasco and its origins. Who knew that someone could win a lawsuit of the name of a "species" of a pepper from Mexico? I can say that all hot sauce people and historians would love this book.

I've made my Mecca to the "shrine" of Tabasco at Avery Island, LA where it first was farmed. It was worth my 3 hour drive from my hotel at Ft. Polk, LA during my business travel. I can say - that this book tells far more than even the employees employed there know about the island. If you go there, look for the 3-legged alligator on the preservation. This story is not just a story of a product but the story of a family, a dream and an amazing transformation of a company from the per-Civil War era to Modern Times. Avery Island is full of history, salt, culture and now endangered animal species that all have benefited from the McIlhenny family.

This is definitely worth the read. And I swear, you will find out so many interesting facts -- you won't be able to NOT "show off" your knowledge at parties or even around strangers at the bar drinking a Bloody Mary with Tabasco!

Very interesting history, but a family tree and more information about the shareholder profile would have added a little more spice.

I loved this book and how it gave us the inside story on a real American success story.

I do not personally like the sauce the company makes but I am fascinated with its history.

The author pulls no punches and seems to have enjoyed access to many former employees and historical documents. I trust Business Week (where Rothfelder works) and this book doesn't disappoint.

I especially liked the chapters dealing with "current" company exploits and how they are reacting. And not reacting!

Good, fast read. You won't want to put it down.

McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

Jeff Rothfeder's McIlhenney's Gold portrays the great American success story, yet with a lot of twists and turns only doing business off a small Louisiana island could produce. He begins at the beginning, with the McIlhenney's first bottle of sauce shortly after the Civil War, and brings the reader up to the present day when, it seems, the family, through its own paranoia and suspicion of outsiders, struggles to keep up with demand while fighting off stiff competition. The book is fairly written, yet with colorful enough characters and details, at times, to feel like you're reading a southern novel. I highly recommend the book, whether or not you drip Tabasco on your scrambled eggs.

Never again will I be able to pick up that little bottle of Tabasco sauce and sprinkle a few drops on whatever I am eating, something I have done several times a week for a few decades now , without thinking of the amazing set of circumstances that came together to put that distinctive little bottle on my table. Sometimes the little diamond-shaped label on the front of the bottle, the one that still mentions Avery Island as being its home, would catch my eye and make me wonder how such a unique product could have been born in such an isolated place and how it managed to survive long enough to become a product recognized around the world. Jeffrey Rothfeder's new book, McIlhenny's Gold, provides the answers to all of my questions.

Rothfeder tells the story of a remarkable family, one that literally rose from the ashes of the Civil War to create a hugely successful business based on the sale of a single food product, a business that is still well known some 140 years later. In his research of the McIlhenny family, Rothfeder found that much of what has come to be accepted about the family's history and the origin of Tabasco sauce is simply untrue. So many myths surround the family and its product, in fact, that even family members have found it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

When Edmund McIlhenny, fifty years old at the end of the Civil War, and prior to the war a successful New Orleans banker, returned to Louisiana in 1865 he found that the Avery family he had married into was largely destitute. The family's rich sugar cane plantation was no more and the only thing of value still in family hands was Petit Anse, the little island that was later to be renamed Avery Island.

Edmund McIlhenny was a businessman, not a farmer. As a pre-war banker, he learned to market himself personally to such a degree that he became the best known and most sought after financial man in New Orleans. His marketing skills, and his willingness to bend the truth when it made for a better story, have made it difficult to determine exactly when he became aware of the chili pepper from Mexico's Tabasco region and how he decided to make hot sauce the new family business. What is clear, however, is that he made the right decision and that he created a business that has served his family well for four generations.

The McIlhenny product has been a high quality one from the beginning. The three-year chili paste aging process and the inability to use mechanized pickers to gather the delicate chili peppers requires that manufacturing costs, especially labor costs, be controlled as tightly as possible. That concern led to the near recreation of the plantation system on Avery Island, a company town so complete with free shelter, medical care, schools and churches that white employees had little reason to ever leave little Avery Island. McIlhenny Co. workers, almost guaranteed a job for life, became extremely loyal to the company that provided them with everything they needed. This system lasted until a few years ago and was key to the company's success.

McIlhenny Co., still based on the sale of a single product, has become a $250 million per year business but it is facing difficult times because one of its previous strengths has turned into its greatest weakness. The company has always been run by a member of the McIlhenny family and for three generations the family was blessed to have a family member ready to take on the job and to do it adequately, if not always completely well. But, as almost always happens in a closely held family business, future generations do not always see things through the eyes of its founder. McIlhenny Co. is at a historical crossroads and its future will be determined by a generation of McIlhennys who may decide that it is time finally to sell the company to the highest bidder rather than make the effort to keep it the tightly controlled family business that it has been for more than 140 years.

Jeffrey Rothfeder has written a well-researched history, complete with interviews of many McIlhenny family members and key employees, a history that tells the story of a fascinating family and business. McIlhenny Co. may not serve as a blueprint for future businesses, but it is hard to argue with what the company has achieved across parts of three centuries.

This is a classic business book, at 223 papes of text and it can be easly read on a coast to coast flight. The format is typical from founder to floundering decendents, in the case of Tobasco sauce the time span is a remarkable 140 years. This is obviously the history of a single product company whos trade marked name has come to define the industry.

There are some tid bits of history here for example the founding of the company. As the official story goes that a Condfederate soldier named Friend Gleason befriended the Avery family with a handful of "Tobasco" seeds that where scattered into the garden before the Union army took over Avery Island during the Civil War and the pepper plants were the only thing that survived the "Yankee" looting and the sauce was developed by brother in law Edmund McLlhenny and a former slave who were considered to lame by the Avery's to do any thing but tend the plantations garden. Or was the concept "stolen" by the Averys and McIlhenny from a pre war sauce made by Maunsel White. The author seems to favor the story that it was Maunsels Whites product that became Tobasco sauce.

The myth vs. truth goes on through the narrative and the author interweaves the business story. Some "facts" Tobasco is very profitable to the family (20-25% net margin, current sales $250 million), The produst heasn't substantially changes until the 1970's when off shore growning and production of the product started taking place. Since then couples with a declining talents of the family Tobasco seems to be at a crossroads.

The options appear clear: 1. Sell the Tobasco trademark to a mega food company for big bucks, 2. Hire outside managers to revive the product or three keep plodding along as them have been for 140 years. The deciding factor is the over 200 decendents of the Avery McIlhennys families who have equal voting rights for the family ownwed stock.

The author has his opinion and I won't give out here, you had to read the book.

very interesting book......but leaves me wanting more!

Somewhat repetitive.....not the "full treatment" the McIlhenny Family deserves. There is a really great story surrounding Tabasco and the Family who created it....but this book, however, isn't it!