BALLINDALLOCH, SCOTLAND — George S. Grant markets malt whisky made in the shadow of the snow-capped Ben Rinnes, the same spot where, five generations ago, his family bought a distillery in 1865 for £511.

Nowadays the family’s Glenfarclas malt is produced in a modern, highly automated plant, and is exported to the United States, Taiwan and other countries. But the profit returns here to the valley of the River Spey in the heart of Scotland’s whisky country. And that repatriated money is what makes Glenfarclas such a rarity.

“Within a 20-mile radius of where we are now, there are 35 distilleries,” said Mr. Grant, the director of sales at Glenfarclas. But only a handful of the operations within that 30-kilometer radius remain in Scottish hands. The rest are owned by big multinationals — most notably Diageo, based in London, and the French company Pernod Ricard — which book their profits and employ many of their staff members elsewhere.

In fact Mr. Grant, 36, says he knows of no other whisky maker apart from Glenfarclas that has its sales and marketing operation based at the distillery in this scenic part of Scotland. Though he says relations with the big non-Scottish players are good — they buy some of Glenfarclas’s output for their blended whiskies, after all — Mr. Grant notes that what sets his family’s company apart is its place in the community and the fact that “we’ve been here forever.”