Pittyvaich Distillery was built in 1975 by Arthur Bell & Sons Ltd adjacent to their Dufftown-Glenfiddich Distillery, operating in parallel. The company also constructed a deep mash tun facility to serve both distilleries. Erected on the site of Pittyvaich Farm, whose origins date back to the 1850s, the existing structures were demolished to accommodate the new distillery. Bell's historian Jack House (1976) described the new building as "ultra-modern, bearing no resemblance to Bell's distilleries in the Speyside region." "They installed the equipment first, then built the exterior around it." Dufftown Distillery had expanded to four stills in 1967 (with an additional pair installed in 1979). Pittyvaich featured two pairs of stills—matching the production demand for Bell's Extra Special at that time. The new distillery had a capacity of one million standard gallons. Bell's UK sales grew from £8.8 million in 1970 to £159 million in 1980, becoming Britain's most popular Scotch whisky brand with a 25% market share. By the early 1990s, Pittyvaich's buildings had fallen into disrepair, with the slate roof requiring replacement. The company decided to close the distillery in 1993, and it was demolished in 2002.

The prefix "Pit-" is one of the few words we still use that was passed down from the Picts, representing a farm, district, or land ownership in that era. This prefix is very common, especially in the eastern counties where the Pictish kingdom once stood. "Vaich" is Gaelic and possibly means "byre," but could also refer to a "cattle farm" or "birch forest."