IT WAS the bargain bottles of 40-year-old whisky that were seemingly worth braving the chilly morning for at a budget supermarket.

Shoppers queued outside Aldi’s Botley Road store from before dawn yesterday hoping to snaffle the advertised bargain of a bottle of Glenbridge, apparently worth £300 but on offer for £49.99.

But with only six bottles available at each Aldi outlet, tickets were given to the first customers who turned up at 6am at both the Botley Road and Banbury stores – two hours before they opened.

Aldi had advertised the whisky as a Speyside single malt, with only 3,000 limited edition gift sets available and aged for at least 40 years in one of “Scotland’s premier distilleries”.

Emma Kelly, 24, from Barton Lane, Oxford, who works in the catering department at Oxford Brookes University, arrived at the store at 7am to try to buy a bottle for her father Michael Kelly, 62.

She said: “I was told by one of the managers that the bottles had already been allocated to people who had queued up earlier.

“I don’t think it was fair to allow customers to reserve bottles. They should have been sold when the store opened at 8am.

“I feel cheated and I’m not planning to shop in Aldi again.

She added; “Now I will buy my dad a bottle of whisky from the specialist whisky shop in Turl Street instead.”

Retired telecoms worker Mr Kelly added: “It’s very disappointing the way Aldi handled this.”

Former Oxford Bus Company park-and-ride bus driver Michael Williams, 62, was another whisky fan who ended up disappointed.

He said: “I collect rare whiskies so I thought it would be nice to try this one for Christmas.

“I have spent £300 to £400 on bottles of whisky in the past.

“The Aldi whisky came from a distillery in Speyside, but they are not saying which one and there are dozens of them.”

According to the firm, connoisseurs can open the bottle “to find a beautiful mahogany liquid with the aroma of dark chocolate and dried figs.”

Botley Road assistant manager Kelvin Brooks said: “I gave the tickets to the diehards who were here at 6am so that they could go and sit in their cars instead of standing in the cold while they waited to pay for the bottles.

“I thought that was the fairest way to do it, and I explained to the people who turned up at 8am what had happened.”

Peter Hack, manager of The Whisky Shop in Turl Street, said he did not recognise Glenbridge as a listed distillery.

He added: “Last year, we sold a bottle of blended Scottish whisky called the 1960 Last Drop for £1,200.”

About 30 shoppers also queued for the whisky from 6am outside the Banbury Aldi in Ruscote Avenue