Each 2-ounce bottle of Original Red Tabasco red sauce contains exactly 720 drops.

That is an oddly specific quantity that affords us a drop per day for just under 2 years. 

A 2-oz. bottle of our Original Red Sauce contains at least 720 drops. (There are 60 drops per teaspoon; 3 teaspoons per tablespoon; 2 tablespoons per fluid ounce and 2 fluid ounces per bottle).

The number of drops in a “splash” or a “dash” of our Original Red Sauce depends entirely upon how hard you shake the bottle!

The 2-ounce bottle originated in 1927, and was based on the cork-top cologne-style bottle that founder Edmund McIlhenny is said to have used when he first made Tabasco Sauce around 1860.  (The sauce is made from ripe red peppers, salt and vinegar and aged for up to three years in oak barrels. McIlhenny chose the name Tabasco as his second choice; it may mean “land where the soil is hot and humid”—perfect conditions for growing the special hot peppers used. Of course, there’s the tabasco pepper and the state in Mexico that also carry that name.) The first Tabasco sauce was sold in cologne bottles, since that’s what McIlhenny could quickly source. (In 1869, the former banker sent his first batch, 658 bottles, to grocers for $1 apiece. It has stayed in diminutive containers ever since.)

For those of us wondering about his first choice:

Other scholars have put forth that Tabasco actually means “place of coral or oyster shell.”

McIlhenny originally wanted to call his concoction Petite Anse Sauce (after the island which then was known as Isle Petite Anse). But when family members balked at the commercial use of the family island’s name, he opted for the trademark TABASCO®.