Wallabies’ wine hits all the right notes

Illustration: Rod Clement

Former Wallaby teammates Adam Ashley-Cooper, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell all enjoyed their time in France in the continental twilight of their playing careers.

Perhaps more so the gourmand culture than on field.

The threesome have reunited to launch a South Australian wine label, Backline Wines, referring to their decorated careers in the eponymous position.

Winemaker Ben Riggs is in there along with the wine merchant David Krenich.

AAC, Gits and Drew, inspired by their time in Bordeaux and Toulon, are co-owners, not just the face of Backline Wines.

Kickstarting the label is the Je Fais, a 2018 Langhorne Creek South Australian cabernet at $139 for a six-pack.

Apparently the result features fruit flavours such as dark berry, licorice and spice with long fine tannins giving it great balance and length. Especially with entrecote bordelaise.

There’s the Pilou Pilou’ Rosé, named after a Toulon war cry, and the Block Raiders Shiraz which pays homage to Mitchell’s 71st-minute try in the 2010 Tri-Nations against South Africa.

The back of the bottle label maps out that play in full.

Slip of the tongue

It was something of a familial throwback when casino tycoon James Packer was called “Jamie” by 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones during their on-air conversation Friday.

The slip came when Packer rang in from his Los Angeles home, one of the many phone calls being orchestrated to see the veteran broadcaster off into radio retirement.

“I don’t want to say how long we have been mates,” a reflective Jones said to Packer, who has been a lifelong “pick and stick club” member.

“But it’s lovely to hear your voice,” Jones added, noting “we communicate all the time via text and emails, always brief and to the point.”

Jones finished the call saying while they were separated by distance, they were “always together in spirit”.

“You’re an amazing friend, and thank you and congratulations,” Packer said.

For much of his first 24 years, Kerry and Roslyn’s son was known as Jamie Packer, although born James Douglas Packer in September 1967. That changed when Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap arrived and decreed the name that worked. Nicknamed Rambo in Pinstripes, the then mid-50s New Jersey-raised, West Point military academy graduate was appointed to run the business of Australia’s then richest man Kerry Packer in 1991. One of his key roles was grooming Jamie to be Kerry’s successor at the then $3bn family empire.

“I sometimes got upset with him,” Dunlap recalled in Mean Business, his best-selling book, which broke the code of silence the family has long expected and enjoyed. “James,” I’d say, “you have to make a decision. You have to determine whether you are James or Jamie. If you want to play polo and take out a different model every night and go skiing, you can continue to be Jamie. But if you want to learn how to run a business you have to become James. And James, I believe you can be a world-class executive if you want.”

Excepting his german shepherds, Dunlap was no sentimentalist or fun-loving guy. Jamie first hit the spotlight as a young playboy, helped along by his brief liaison with Penthouse Pet Emma Stone in 1987, although its editor Phil Abraham once said that the pursuit had been “hers rather than his”. By 1988 the dalliance was over, reported the chronicler of the times, Dorian Wild. “I sent him packing,” she told Wild, who wrote she was oblivious to the pun.

Musical chairs at 3AW

The departure of 3AW breakfast co-presenter John Burns nears, but without any of the fanfare of his Sydney radio network colleague, Alan Jones.

Burns’s replacement is yet to be announced although regular fill-in Stephen Quartermain remains hometown favourite to join Ross Stevenson. One issue for Nine’s Tom Malone is Quartermain is with the Network 10, not the Nine camp, like Deb Knight and Stevie Jacobs, other recent Macquarie Radio signings.

Burns turns 75 this July, so just before the last Christmas break he announced he’d step away from the mic in July.

However given COVID-19’s disruption, the rather dry, cereal-time entertainer won’t be literally cruising off into the sunset. He was set to host an $8999 19-night voyage on the MS Veendam through Venice, Athens, Istanbul and Sorrento, this October.

Margin Call reckons there must be have a big incentive for Burns to take up the Travelrite International tour aboard the Holland America Line ship as back in 2016 he told listeners he would prefer to go to jail than go on a cruise. And he’s seen a few cells when he was a Crown prosecutor.

Stevenson and Burns have enjoyed 147 consecutive surveys hosting Melbourne’s No 1 breakfast show with a total of 218 wins since 2001.

Malone also needs a new Brisbane breakfast host as unlike the 226 consecutive Sydney ratings winner Jones, Ben Fordham, his replacement, won’t be broadcast into Queensland.

Last block standing

Block by block the Peppermint Grove Taj Mahal on Swan estate is being sold off.

Two lots that were once part of the superblock once owned by Indian entrepreneurs Pankaj and Radhika Oswal have sold in recent weeks.

These 888sq m building blocks were listed by businessman John Gillett who bought the 6582sq m block for $17m in 2018 from theOswals.

There is a 1038sq m block still for sale through Vivien Yap at Ray White. They’re being sold by Gillett, a former Moran Health Care executive who sold WA aged-care provider Craigcare in 2017, who is building on his remaining 3900sq m block.

The Oswals had paid $22.7m to buy the holding from Warren Anderson with their incomplete temple-inspired home knocked down in 2016 after they abandoned Perth. Seems they claim to have also been subject to racism in their new life given their current legal action against an exclusive Swiss school Institut Le Rosey.

Gone with the wind

They love a subdivision in the west, highlighted by the latest listing on the former Gone With the Wind-style Prix D’Amour mansion estate.

Rose Hancock Porteous knocked down the mansion in 2006 and subdivided it into 10 lots, keeping two.

Hancock Porteous and husband William Porteous are constructing their own three-level house and have listed the last lot for $3.5m.

The local paper noted she’d been called many things — Filipino housemaid, gold digger, Australia’s richest woman, beauty therapist, poet, agony aunt and socialite — but these days she says the label that best fits is ecowarrior.

“Material trappings do not bind or blind me,” she told the West Australian.

Hancock Porteous plans to auction her haute couture clothes and jewellery, which she says are worth millions, and then donate the money to conservation causes.

Punter Peters

The prominent Perth horse owner Bob Peters has been the white knight for the Perth-based national real estate network The Agency in its need for finance during the COVID-19 shutdown.

The $1m from Peters Investments will be a standby working capital facility at 9 per cent interest, as required by their primary lender, Macquarie, under its recent debt repayment extension agreement. Peters has agreed to invest through the subscription of convertible notes.

The deal also sees Peters, who made a fortune selling cars, secure the first right of refusal to possibly replace the $12.5m Macquarie debt facility come September 30.

Peters was introduced to The Agency by its recently appointed corporate adviser Canaccord Genuity (Australia).

The leviathan Peters and wife Sandra have been on the racing scene since the west was home to some of Australia’s biggest owners, including Laurie Connell, Dallas Dempster, John Roberts and Robert Holmes a Court from whom he bought land at Keysbrook to create his showpiece stud, Yalebra. The stud stood Old Spice, who sired Rogan Josh, winner of the 1999 Melbourne Cup.

Peters has raced the winners of eight Perth Cups, nine WA Derbies, 13 WA Oaks, five Kingston Town Classics, an Australian Cup, this year’s All Star Mile with Regal Power, plus two Goodwood Handicaps.