Benriach has always been associated with its larger, more famous neighbor Longmorn. Benriach was built in 1897 by John Duff, who was also the founder of Longmorn. The architect was Charles Doig, a first-class distillery architect at the time. However, Duff later fell into financial difficulties and sold Benriach to Longmorn Distillers Company two years later. In 1900, the distillery was closed (although it continued to provide malt to its neighbor Longmorn Distillery through a quarter-mile-long railway branch line). It did not reopen until 1965, when the owner was Glenlivet Distillers Ltd, which rebuilt the distillery. Seagram's acquired The Glenlivet Group in 1977 and transferred the license to its subsidiary Chivas Brothers. In 2001, Seagram's whisky division was acquired by Pernod Ricard, and Benriach was closed again until 2004, when it was sold for £8 million to a consortium of three entrepreneurs. The consortium was led by master distiller Billy Walker and backed by Infra Trading. The distillery resumed production in September of that year. In April 2016, Benriach and its sister distilleries Glendronach and Glenglassaugh (see related entries) were acquired by US spirits giant Brown-Forman (owner of Jack Daniels) for £285 million.

Billy Walker is one of the most experienced whisky merchants today. With a background in organic chemistry, he joined Ballantine's in 1971, then worked as a blender at Inver House, and subsequently at Burn Stewart Distillers. His acquisition team purchased Burn Stewart in 1988 (see 'Deanston' entry), and he himself became the latter's Production Director. In July 2008, he bought Glendronach distillery from Chivas Brothers (see 'Glendronach'), and in 2013 purchased Glenglassaugh distillery from Scaent Group. Although Benriach was in a closed state most of the time, its floor maltings were used almost continuously until 1999, with peat rights at Faemussach Moor near Tomintoul. Even during Seagram's ownership, Longmorn distillery's malt was malted here, though Benriach itself also relied on externally supplied malt. After 1980, as the railway line between the two distilleries was dismantled, Benriach completely used its own malt. After trial operation in November 2012, the new owners reopened the malting floors in 2013. Before 1965, Benriach had 1 wash still and 1 spirit still. Later the capacity was doubled! After some time, a third spirit still was installed. This caused an imbalance, so the extra spirit still had to be dismantled (eventually sold to a Canadian company). Starting in 1983, Benriach annually produced not only unpeated malt whisky, but also a certain amount of peated style whisky, which could be called unique in the Speyside region at the time. This allowed the distillery's new owners to add aged Speyside peated style whisky to their product line.