The Miltonduff distillery lies in the Glen of Pluscarden, whose barley rich pastures once played host to as many as fifty illicit stills during the 1800s. The site was once the meal mill of Pluscarden Abbey. The Benedictine Priory of Pluscarden was founded in 1236 and had been closed for some time, until 1948 when it was reopened. The Miltonduff whisky distillery was founded by Robert Bain and Andrew Peary in 1824, shortly after the Excise Act was passed.
Miltonduff was named for an illicit distillery known as Milton and the suffix was added for the Duff family, who owned the land. It was following Hiram Walker Gooderham and Worts’ acquisition of George Ballantine and Son in 1935, that the need for a stable supply of Scotch malt whisky became evident. Accordingly, the Miltonduff distillery was acquired a year later and transferred subsequently to the supervision of George Ballantine. From then on, Miltonduff whisky has been an important component of Ballantine’s popular blended products.
The distillery is now under Chivas Brothers ownership, following the acquisition of Allied by Chivas' parent company Pernod Ricard in 2005. The three pairs of stills have a combined total capacity of 5.5 million litres annually and in 1964 two Lomond stills were installed. It is in these stills that Mosstowie, a rare single malt, is distilled. There has been an officially released bottling, though it is no longer produced. There have been, however, a handful of independent releases.