Back for its 11th year over the Easter weekend 7-10 April 2023, at Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat situated in the Overberg, the Greenpop Reforest Fest is an annual restoration celebration that brings people together to plant thousands of trees, while partying for the planet and reconnecting to the beauty and abundance of nature and community.
It’s a festival for everyone and whether you celebrate Easter or not, there is much to be grateful for over this long weekend. Help restore degraded land; attend workshops, talks & classes. Celebrate under the stars with local live music & DJ’s and delight in the wholesome food village. Where creativity meets participation, join in the diverse array of entertainment with interactive art & theatre for the whole family - all while having a blast getting active for the environment.
The stunning surroundings of Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat welcome explorers to its milkwood forests and fynbos trails. New this year is our exciting Tented Village, featuring luxury-fitted bell tents and pre-erected Kartents - fully-equipped 2-person cardboard tents, to suit all budgets and preferences.
What you can expect at Reforest Fest 2023
There will be many exciting activities to look forward to at this year’s Reforest Fest that serve everyone's interests. Guests can look forward to live music from local South African artists, bands and DJs who are sure to get you swaying to the beat.
Jeremy Loops is headlining this year’s Reforest Fest! Greenpop’s very own co-founder and internationally acclaimed South African artist, Jeremy Loops, will be shaking up the stage with his looping talents as well as adding something unique to this performance with some throwbacks to some of his greats from his early days and adding some personal story telling too! Other artists to look forward to include Majozi, Josh Riley (from Grassy Spark), Genevieve Lee, The Flintstones, Jews For Techno and Qondéa Avril Mkansi.
Reforest Fest is a family-friendly event, so bring your little ones along for the fun. Child-friendly activities include an Easter Egg Hunt hosted by Honest Chocolate and an interactive, plastic-free kids zone curated by Nature Plays - Forest School, where children can enjoy craft and interactive play, art, citizen science and dress-up games. Nannies and facilitators will be available to care for the little ones while dads and moms can attend other workshops.
Adults have the opportunity to indulge in chocolate and wine pairings hosted by Honest Chocolate where they can experience locally made vino from the Agulhas area and further afield, which are sure to tantalise the senses.
Wellness activities range from yoga to movement classes, where people can relax and unwind surrounded by the beauty of the Uilenkraal Valley and Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat.
Our Easter Sunday Harvest Feast is an event where everyone can connect. It includes an incredible picnic-style lunch created by Chef Bridget Bartlement - a long-term resident of the Overberg, who works as a private chef for some of the Overberg finest establishments and Lodges. She is passionate about providing great dining experiences with ethically-sourced food.
The harvest menu will include delectable dishes, such as: Fynbos goat cheese-cake with figs, wild mushroom and pine arancini balls, Klein river smoked cheese trinket and Klein river Danbo, to name but a few. In addition, those that join in the feast will also get to pair the many dishes with an assortment of wines being served up at the festival.
Conservation Wine Champion Tent
At Greenpop’s Reforest Fest 2022, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) hosted a wine tasting with four very special wine farms, namely: Lomond Wines, Lost Boy, Boland Cellar, and Spier. Our aim was to shift the narrative around South African wine culture, creatively exploring these nature-based and regenerative wine farms by celebrating their wine through a multi-sensory tasting experience. The space encouraged wine makers and tasters to interact in a way less conventional, allowing for the wines to be poured by all, and bringing the essence of sharing, and exploring flavours, through conversation and sampling across farms.
In 2023 Greenpop and WWF Conservation Wines are partnering up to create a space celebrating local wines and wines that are on their conservation journey. The aim is to educate guests about choosing wines that support conservation efforts. This experience will feature Warwick Wine Estate, Boland Cellar, Strandveld Vineyards, Skipskop Wines and Lost Boy Wines to curate a number of unique experiences.
The wine space will give festival goers the opportunity to savour an assortment of delicious wine, and speak to the winemakers about their conservation and biodiversity journey while enjoying the flavours of nature.
We plan to have several wines from local and further afield. Wines will be paired with flavour experiences to heighten the journey and give a taste anchor from which to better understand their sensory experience – from spices, to grasses, to all things weird and wonderful – we want to explore those flavors to their depths.
More than this, we will be exploring, through conversation, the various conservation efforts underway by the wine farms involved. WWF Conservation Champion wines will also be there, educating the public on their wine choices and providing perspective surrounding what the wine industry can do for good, to encourage more conscious and informed consumer purchases.
In addition, Honest Chocolate will be doing a wine and chocolate tasting. Join us in exploring pockets of flavour as we pair delicious conservation red wines with dark chocolate moments.
More about the wine farms at Reforest Fest
Skipskop Wines
Skipskop Wines is a boutique Overberg wine cellar specialising in hand-crafted wines from their vineyards located both within Napier and against the Swartberg mountains in the Klein Karoo close to Ladismith. Their ethos is to create low sulphur fine wines with minimum interventions. Both vineyards are irrigated by natural leiwater that sources from the surrounding mountains.
Boland Cellar
Boland Cellar has a sustainable story to tell – a story of hope for generations to come. Boland Cellar, who is one of Greenpop’s pledge partners, is an award winning wine producer which originated in Paarl. Boland was established when French Hugenot farmers settled in the Western Cape, and believed that through collaborative efforts, they could create better wine, and build South Africa’s burgeoning wine industry.
Boland Cellar has a primary focus on doing collaboration work and they do not just “produce wine”, but rather they use it as a tool to plough back into South Africa's ecosystems. All of their farming practices are adopted and executed with one goal in mind – environmentally sustainable wine grape production.
Through their involvement with Greenpop’s Forests for Life programme, Boland Cellar is working to preserve the habitat of honey bees through reforestation. This is not only crucial to ensure the future viability of agricultural crops, but also helps to offset carbon emissions and create healthy biodiversity. It is a key tool for Boland Cellar to walk the talk on environmental sustainability – wine that makes a real difference!
Strandveld Vineyards
Africa’s southernmost winery and vineyard, Strandveld Vineyards is situated near the southern tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas, in the fledgling Elim wine ward. While some may lament the fierce winds, rolling sea mists and cool temperatures, these are the foundation for growing the grapes that make the distinctive terroir driven Strandveld wines. The vines used for these wines contend with the same tempestuous elements as did the early Portuguese sailors.
Today they have 70 hectares of vineyard, which due to the terroir is focused on Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz and Pinot noir with smaller plantings of Semillon, Viognier, Grenache and Mourvedre for blending. All the wine is produced in the modern cellar on the farm.
Hand-in-hand with these conservation efforts are sustainable farming practices, all of which lend themselves to the protection of endangered plants and animals whilst ensuring food security.
LOST BOY Wines
LOST BOY Wines is a boutique, natural wine label crafted by retired American professional cyclist Trevor DeRuisé in the cool-climate Cape Agulhas wine region. With LOST BOY, DeRuisé focuses on dry, elegant, and Provence-inspired rosé wines with an unwavering commitment to wildlife conservation. With each bottle of LOST BOY sold, a R50 contribution to a partnered wildlife conservation is made.
From the vineyard to the cellar to the wine shop, protecting the beautiful environment and ecosystem these wines come from is the ultimate goal.
Warwick Wine Estate
Long before the fruit farm, and long before the Ratcliffe family, this little piece of the planet held greatness in its very soil. And more than just being part of our ‘history’, this land is our heritage.
Warwick Wine Estate has a rich range of cultivars on the estate, the quality of our wines is owed as much to the elements and environment as it is to the vineyard and cellar teams. We strive to work the land in a way that maintains a balance between the biodiversity and the vines that produce grapes for our wines. This not only extends to our practises of sowing cover crops such as lupins and radishes to naturally uplift soil compaction, and promote microbial activity, but they also seek to use water as sparingly as possible. We refrain from using harmful insecticides, employing natural predators instead. In short, we seek to achieve long-term harmony, rather than short-term gains.
It may be admirable to produce a wine like our Trilogy, that can outlast a generation. But it’s essential to preserve our environment to outlast us all.
Fun health facts about red wine and dark chocolate
Besides tasting delicious, red wine and dark chocolate both promote increased levels of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin within the body, which are the primary chemicals associated with feelings of happiness. Thus, red wine and dark chocolate paired together will bring about feelings of calmness and contentment, while reducing anxiety and stress.
Studies have found that drinking red wine and eating dark chocolate has many positive health benefits, especially for your heart health. Dark chocolate is found to “[...] better blood circulation, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels and a lower risk for stroke”. This lowering in blood pressure levels allows the feelings of relaxation to kick in. Similarly the antioxidants in red wine have the same positive health benefits, with the added benefits of preventing coronary artery disease, protecting the lining of blood vessels in the heart, preventing blood vessels from being damaged, reducing bad cholesterol and preventing any formation of blood clots.
About the WWF Conservation Champions
The WWF Conservation Champion wine farms are environmental leaders in SA's wine industry who are collaborating with WWF to tackle their shared environmental risks, protect conservation-worthy land as well as reduce their water usage and implement energy-efficient solutions.
Through a voluntary membership model, WWF works with the farms whose landowners commit to biodiversity-friendly and regenerative farming practices. WWF supports these 58 farms in their environmental efforts by co-developing detailed environmental management plans, setting tangible targets and helping them to prioritise actions to address their most pressing environmental risks.
In exchange for their commitment to nature and adhering to WWF's high standards, the Conservation Champions can use the distinctive sugarbird and protea logo on their wine bottles so consumers can make an informed choice to support our environmental wine leaders!
To find out more, @FollowtheSugarbird on Instagram and download the Champion Wine Farm guide App which lists the Conservation Champions and highlights the different experiences on offer for the whole family to enjoy - much more than just wine tasting! WWF Champion Wine Guide App - Download for iOS and Android. #followthesugarbird
The festival’s history
Since 2011, Greenpop’s biggest tree planting event of the year has always been the Reforest Fest! By facilitating attendees to plant between 5,000 and 10,000 indigenous trees each year, this event contributes towards Greenpop's Uilenkraal Forest Restoration Project which aims to restore degraded forest patches at the Platbos Forest Reserve and Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat. So far, the project has planted a total of 105,645 trees, restoring forest habitat and furthermore helping to preserve and expand a forest that is home to many incredible, often endangered, species including the Cape leopard and honey badger.
This year, they will continue their important work at Bodhi Khaya, located 2.5 hours drive away from Cape Town in the Overberg region. Greenpop’s planting efforts in the Overberg valley are growing and they will be planting trees in pockets of previously forested land, as part of a broader ecosystem restoration management plan in development by the Walker Bay Fynbos Conservancy.
Greenpop aims to grow the Reforest Fest into a flagship event that attracts a global audience as Africa’s largest citizen-led restoration festival.
Join Greenpop’s tree-planting festival and help celebrate the age of restoration!
Buy your tickets HERE.