In 1815 brothers Alexander and Donald Johnston built a distillery at Laphroaig. Donald, who ran the distillery, tragically died in 1847 after falling into a vat of boiling pot ale. Laphroaig however remained in the control of D. Johnston & Co. until the 1960s.

A period of passing through various hands and amalgamations ended when Jim Beam purchased it from Allied Distillers in 2005, and from 2014 part of Beam-Suntory.