As the temperature fell in the middle of the night, the thought of what lay inside kept the queue outside a Fife shop warm.
Locals queued for more than 12 hours overnight into Saturday morning to get their hands on a coveted bottle of Fife-made whisky.
Luvians in St Andrews had 10 bottles of Daftmill’s 2009 sherry cask, plus 10 of the distillery’s 25cl bourbon cask miniatures.
Customers began queuing at just after 10pm, waiting almost 12 hours in the cold to get their hands on a bottle.
The locally-made whisky sold for £160 per bottle, while the miniatures sold for £9.95 each.
People queued throughout the night
Store manager Archie McDiarmid was delighted with the response.
He said: “It went really quickly.
“The first guy in the queue was there from 10am the night before so he was there just shy of 12 hours.”
Archie estimates there were between 50 and 60 people who headed home after seeing the size of the queue.
“We put a sign on the door to tell people how many bottles we had.
“It said if there were more than that number of people in the queue, you probably weren’t going to get a bottle so don’t stand in the queue.
“The last person who got their hands on a bottle was there from 4am so anyone who turned up any later than that had missed their chance.”
Those queueing into the small hours were treated to coffees by Luvians café director Tony Fusaro.
When the doors opened at 10am, it took just minutes for the whisky to fly off the shelves.
What is Daftmill?
Daftmill farm is situated in the Howe of Fife. It is run by Francis Cuthbert.
Its main enterprises are growing cereals, mainly malting barley, rearing beef cattle and growing potatoes. The farm also produces carrots and broccoli.
In June 2003, Daftmill applied for planning permission to convert the old mill buildings into a distillery.
It took most of 2004 and 2005 to repair the buildings and install all the equipment.
The Luvians manager added: “It is one of, if not the smallest, production distilleries in Scotland.
“They only produce whisky during the down-time on the farm, so when there’s not barley to look after.
“As a result, production runs are very small. Francis thought it might have some local interest, but for him it’s not his main business focus.
“The whisky is brilliant.
“As its reputation has grown there are thousands of people trying to get a hold of bottles, but they only do about three or four releases a year.”
Online Daftmill sale crashed website
Last year, lockdown restrictions meant Luvians sold its Daftmill batch online.
Archie said that brought chaos to the website.
“Our website can cope with 10,000 refreshes every three seconds and it crashed multiple times – that’s how popular it was.
“It has a real global interest.
“It’s a perfect storm of a great product in short supply that has a global interest and an incredible re-sale when it goes to auction.
“The last single cask that came out, the 2020 one, that is now going for £600-plus less than a year later.”