Distillation of whisky has been performed in Scotland and Ireland for centuries. The first written record of whisky comes from 1405 in Ireland, the production of whisky from malted barley is first mentioned in Scotland in an entry on the 1494 Exchequer Rolls, which reads "Eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor, by order of the King, wherewith to make aqua vitae." Single malt whisky is associated with the Scottish tradition, although there are Irish single malts.

From the 15th century onwards, whisky was heavily taxed in Scotland, to the point that most of the spirit was produced illegally. However, in 1823, Parliament passed an act making commercial distillation much more profitable, while imposing punishments on landowners when unlicensed distilleries were found on their properties. George Smith was the first person to take out a licence for a distillery under the new law, founding the Glenlivet Distillery in 1824.



In the 1830s, Aeneas Coffey refined a design originally created by Robert Stein for a continuous stills which produced whisky much more efficiently than the traditional pot stills, but with much less flavour. Quickly, merchants began blending the malt whisky with the grain whisky distilled in the continuous stills, making the first blended Scotch whisky. The blended whisky proved quite successful, less expensive to produce than malt with more flavour and character than grain. The combination allowed the single malt producers to expand their operations as the blended whisky was more popular on the international market.

From 1918 to 1920, a Japanese chemist Masataka Taketsuru travelled to Scotland. He trained at the University of Glasgow and at several distilleries. On his return to Japan, the Yamazaki distillery opened. Over the succeeding century ten Japanese distilleries have produced single malt whisky, broadly in the Scotch tradition. Japan is now the second largest producer of single malt in the world but single malt distilleries also exist in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa.

Single malt whisky is a whisky which is distilled at a single distillery, and which is made completely from a single type of malted grain, traditionally barley, (although there are also single malt rye whiskies). Most single malt whiskies are distilled using a pot still. Single malts are produced all over the world, but the best known single malts come from Scotland, Ireland and Japan.