Bladnoch was established in 1817 by brothers Thomas and John McClelland, beginning as a farm distillery operated by John's son Charles. Production ceased in 1905. In 1911, the distillery was sold to Irish whiskey merchants Dunville & Company, operating only intermittently until 1937 when Dunville entered liquidation. Ross & Coulter subsequently acquired the site, demolishing it in 1941 and selling its 89,000 cask inventory below market value—triggering a 100% 'excess profit tax' from the Inland Revenue. They then sold the distillery equipment to Sweden (one still now resides in a museum). A.B. Grant took over the buildings, establishing Bladnoch Distillery Company and installing two new stills in 1956. Ten years later, he sold to Glasgow blenders McGowan & Cameron, who doubled capacity to four stills. From 1973, the distillery was owned by Inver House, then sold to Arthur Bell & Sons, becoming part of Guinness and U.D. in 1985. They reduced capacity by taking a pair of stills offline. The distillery closed in June 1993. The local authority managed part of the buildings as a 'heritage center.' The story should have ended there. However, in 1994 it was purchased by Northern Irish property developers from Banbridge—Raymond Armstrong, his brother Colin, and their wives—a family-run enterprise. Initial plans to convert the site into holiday homes were quickly abandoned as the new owners recognized the distillery's vital role in the local economy. Additionally, the visitor center was highly successful but would be meaningless without a working distillery. U.D., who had sold Bladnoch believing it would never resume production, negotiated to help the new owners restart operations. Production resumed in December 2000, but ceased again in 2009. The company entered voluntary liquidation in 2014 and was acquired in July 2015 by Australian entrepreneur David Prior, who had recently sold his highly successful yogurt company for $80 million USD. He undertook major refurbishment with plans to increase capacity to one million liters of pure alcohol per annum. Experienced master distiller Ian McMillan was appointed distillery manager.

Wigtown is located on Solway Bay at the southern tip of Scotland, and Bladnoch is the southernmost distillery in Scotland. This is a remote and rarely visited place, although there have historically been 11 distilleries in this area. David Prior still owns Bladnoch Distillery. He carried out large-scale renovations and upgrades to the visitor center, reopened it in 2019, and appointed former Macallan Master Distiller Dr. Nick Savage as the distillery's Master Distiller.