Until the 1870s, Glenburgie's location was known as Kilnflat, a place in the Avoch parish between Elgin and Forres. In 1829, William Paul, the son of a distinguished surgeon, built a distillery here, having previously been involved with the nearby Grange Distillery. Glenburgie was established in 1810 (which the distillery considers its founding year). In 1871, Paul leased the distillery to Charles Hill, who renamed it 'Glenburgie' and sold it in 1882 to Alexander Fraser & Company. The new owner went bankrupt in 1925. The receiver was a notable figure named Donald Mustard, who took over the distillery but did not resume production. Two years later, he sold it to James & George Stodart Ltd, a Dundee blending firm and owners of the Old Smuggler brand. Canadian distilling giant Hiram Walker purchased 60% of Stodart Ltd in 1930—this was Walker's first move into the Scottish whisky market—and gained full control of the distillery in 1936, while also acquiring Miltonduff Distillery. The previous year they had purchased George Ballantine & Son Ltd from James Barclay (see 'Strathisla'), making Glenburgie and Miltonduff important malt whiskies for the Ballantine's blend to this day. In 1987, Allied Lyons acquired Ballantine's and its associated distilleries, and in 2005 transferred them to the Pernod Ricard group and its operating division Chivas Brothers. The Glenburgie distillery was demolished in 2004 and rebuilt at a nearby location at a cost of £4.3 million. The distillery reopened in June 2005, and an additional pair of stills was installed the following year.

Notably, the original distillery building constructed in 1829 still stands in a parking lot today, but has been elegantly renovated as a tasting room. The room is tiny: a two-window stone cottage, approximately 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, with an exterior staircase leading to a separate room and a low-ceilinged spirits cellar. Between 1958 and 1981, two Lomond stills were installed at the distillery and put into operation, producing Glencraig single malt whisky, named after William Craig, the production director at Ballantine's at the time (see 'Inverleven' and 'Miltonduff'). According to his son—who still works for the company—the name was chosen to appease his father, who doubted the effectiveness of Lomond stills. In the 1980s, the Lomond stills were replaced with conventional pot stills by changing the heads. In the seminal work 'Scotch Whisky' (1930) by Aeneas Macdonald, Glenburgie was listed among the author's 12 favorite Highland malts. In the 1940s, novelist Maurice Walsh served as an excise officer at Glenburgie. His works 'The Quiet Man' and 'Trouble in the Glen' were adapted into Hollywood films—the first released in 1950 (starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara), the second in 1954 (starring Orson Welles and Margaret Lockwood). His grandson is a master blender at Jameson. Looking out from the fermentation room corridor, the lowlands of Moray stretch down to the Moray Firth—a spectacular sight.