It’s a “natural ferment”, I suppose. Just salt and chiles left to do what they do naturally, not that disimilar to winemaking in some ways, I suppose. And of course, just like wine, there will be many factors that could affect the flavor of your pepper mash… Terroir and type of chile, type of salt and it’s mineral content, barrels- in this case toasted, repurposed, white oak bourbon barrels… and probably the conditions of ferment and aging (hot and humid Louisiana salt mine ostensibly with local bacteria on the island) I mean, I wonder if the sauce hasn’t changed since they started having their peppers grown elsewhere and they have changed their salt source. But I’m sure it would be really hard to duplicate authentic old time McIlhenny’s tabasco because of the unique terroir of Avery Island. I’m sure the new industrialized mass produced tabasco has changed within the last 40 years or so- anybody notice any difference between “old” tabasco and “new” tabasco?
But if I were trying to make my own pepper mash ferment, I’d probably consider my location foremost and use local peppers and local ingredients and try for something similar, but entirely unlike tabasco, a native sauce… I might experiment with a few batches with different wood barrels (or winemakers barrel chips) and degrees of toasting. For some reason, I’m thinking Old Port or Sherry (fortified wine) barrels would be better than bourbon barrels for the process… but that’s just intuition… whether it is better is an unknown.