Like Gin & Tonic? There's a brilliant G&T Festival taking place in Kildare this coming week

The town of Maynooth is gearing up for its first ever Gin & Tonic Festival next week, and for any fans of the popular spirit it sounds like a must not miss event.

The idea behind the festival is the brainchild of a number of business owners in the town who have been looking to generate some more excitement around the nightlife in the area over the last couple of years. The Maynooth Gin & Tonic Festival, which gets going this Thursday June 29 and runs until Sunday July 2, is derived from the collaboration of proprietors from venues such as Picaderos, O'Neill's Steakhouse & Bar, Oak Alley Bar & Restaurant, Avenue Restaurant & Wine Bar, The Glenroyal Hotel.

After achieving the status as a Purple Flag town, meaning that Maynooth is regarded as an excellent destination for evening and nightlife, the business community are keen to further increase activity in the area.

"Maynooth won the prestigious Purple Flag last January, and on the back of that a new level of collaboration grew within the town," said Martin McMahon, general manager of Picaderos, Oak Alley Bar & Restaurant and Donatello's.

"There's a new business community that has started to collaborate with each other on various different levels. We started talking to each other and we were all looking to do a Gin & Tonic Masterclass and we were all talking to the same suppliers. We ended up sitting down together and saying 'do you know what, we have all the infrastructure here, why don't we do a Gin Festival?."

"We would have worked together on the Maynooth Purple Flag application, so that was a good foundation for us all to build towards the future. Our ambition this year was to launch a Gin & Tonic Festival and we're hoping that we might keep the momentum going into next year and we might possibly have a Food Festival."

So what kind of events are on during a Gin & Tonic Festival? Well there's everything from tasting different types of gin to even distilling it, and the fact that it is running over four days mean that there will be plenty of time to attend some of the events.

"One of the ones that excites me is the Listoke Distillery is coming down to O'Neill's Bar on Friday evening and they're going to do a live distillation and they're going to get customers to come up and do their own distillation, so I think as an interactive experience that's one of the ones that would definitely appeal to me anyways," said McMahon.

"One of my own personal ones that I'm looking forward to is our Hendrick's High Tea and Tonic Party that we're hosting in Oak Alley on Saturday afternoon, so that will be sweet and savoury snacks but with the exception of having afternoon tea you're having afternoon G&T. There's a lot of interest in that. We're going to have live actors on the day, they're called Hendrick's chappies and they dress up in Victorian outfits. They'll be creating a bit of excitement and a bit of atmosphere and customers will be served sweet and savoury snacks on a three-tier cake stand."