For what is supposed to be Australia's top tipple, Penfolds wines have been associated with some of Australia's worst corporate hangovers.

It's not due to the quality of the wines.

Year after year Penfolds produces excellent drops, from the seriously expensive Bin 170, which at $1,800 a bottle makes Grange's $785 price tag almost quaffable, through the more affordable Koonunga Hill range.

Tasty drops all, yet the brand is building a reputation as a poisoned chalice for executives and investors alike.

Once again Penfolds, a key part of Treasury Wine Estates' brands, is on the block, facing yet another upheaval and yet another set of owners.

The $3.1 billion bid from the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, while unsolicited, wasn't unexpected.

The TWE wine business had been spun out of the Fosters Group largely because it was dragging down returns and putting off potential buyers for either business.

If the 2011 demerger was intended to get a bit of takeover action happening, rather than allow separate management teams to concentrate on entirely different products in entirely different markets, it's worked a treat.

The Fosters beer business was swallowed by multinational giant SABMiller within a year.

The wine business is most definitely in play, despite the board rebuffing KKR's bid and telling shareholders that it was not in their best interests and they, "do not intend to take any further action in relation to the proposal."

Early Days

Penfolds' first 120 or so years after Dr Christopher Rawson Penfold planted his vines at the foot of the Mount Lofty ranges outside Adelaide were largely uneventful.

A believer in the medicinal wonders of the grape, Dr Penfold produced sherry and port as a tonic for his ailing patients, although it's doubtful it provided much palliative treatment for those suffering chronic morning headaches.

There was a shift in fashion from fortified to table wines, but that was about it until Penfolds became a public company in 1962.

Its first taste of takeover activity was 1976 when the now defunct brewers Tooth and Co thought they'd have a crack at a bit of debt-fuelled growth and diversification.

It was the start of a recurring and monumentally unsuccessful business strategy that would taint Penfolds for the best part of four decades - for while its wine makers could make wine, its managers struggled to manage.

Tooth was already under the pump when it bought Penfolds and soon fell to the even more aggressively geared Adelaide Steamship.

Adelaide Steamship's days as a corporate raider were scuttled by the 1990's recession.

Penfolds was tossed overboard back into the hands of another brewer, SA Brewing this time, which at least had the advantage of being solvent.

SA Brewing had what all regular drinkers know is the good sense of separating wine from beer, and Penfolds became the standard bearer for a new business named Southcorp Wines.

Enter the one time New Guinea coffee trader Bob Oatley, who not only knew about wine but also how to sell it.

The Oatley family also stand out as about the only big winners in the saga.

They pocketed about $1.5 billion selling their Rosemount Estates business to Southcorp in 2001 and still ended up running the show.

Penfolds “Fosterised”

The Oatleys made another killing in 2005 when Fosters came waving its chequebook.

Fosters had already shown a repeated capacity to pay exceedingly generous prices for wineries.

In 1996, it stumped up $482 million for the Mildara Blass group, and then $2.7 billion for the US-based Beringer business in 1999.

It managed to snap up Southcorp at the top of the market for $3.2 billion, with the Oatleys getting another $584 million for their remaining 19 per cent stake in company.

Fosters embarked on a bold campaign to flog fine wines the way they flogged beer. It failed dismally.

CEO Trevor O'Hoy left abruptly and his replacement John Pollaers described the wine business as a big distraction.

That's certainly one way of putting it. Value destroying is another.

In 16 years Fosters managed to spend about $9 billion putting together its bulging cellar of 52 brands.

When the wine business was disgorged by Fosters two years ago as the separately listed Treasury Wine Estates, the company had a market capitalisation of a little over $2 billion.

KKR Bid

Opinions vary about whether KKR's $3.1 billion offer represents anything like a fair price.

Deutsche Bank's analysts say the $4.70 per share bid is "well above where the fundamental value lies", while CLSA's team says it's well below their valuation.

The market is currently siding with CLSA.

TWE is trading about 10 per cent higher than KKR's bid, with speculation that a better bid or even other bidders are in the wings.

The Penfolds brand is still the most precious asset in the TWE cellar.

The desire to own Penfolds has a history of clouding the financial judgement of buyers, who've always been prepared to pay a healthy, or some may say unhealthy, premium to get their hands it.

Have lessons been learnt? TWE shareholders hope not.

They'll be hoping that history repeats, and the lure of Penfolds will again be too intoxicating, and that KKR's money on the bar is just the first shout in a rowdy and very liquid session.