Are you planning a wine-tasting tour? Before you set out on the road, you should have a clear plan on how to avoid getting intoxicated or driving while intoxicated. Otherwise, you might find your tour interrupted when you get arrested for driving under the influence (DUI). Here are three precautions to help you avoid such an anticlimax:
Don't Swallow—Spit
The first thing to note is that wine tasting isn't synonymous with wine drinking; you can taste wine perfectly without drinking it. Therefore, if you will be driving, restrict your tasting episodes to actual tasting and then spitting out the wine. In fact, most wineries have dump buckets where you can dispose your drink after tasting it. Just get a small cup where you can spit your drink after smelling and swirling it in your mouth, when the cup is about full, dump it in the bucket.
Rest after Recent Drinking
Don't get into the car immediately after a wine tasting episode. If you do that and you are stopped for a DUI test, the breathalyzer may give a false positive due to the alcohol in your mouth. Give it about twenty minutes; even certified breath testers are trained to observe subjects for this long before administering the test. You can spend time talking to other wine tasters or connoisseurs or touring the winery before getting behind the wheel.
Get a Designated Driver
If you plan to drink or don't trust yourself to spit out good wine all the time, then you ought to take a designated driver with you or plan for alternative transport. It doesn't take much wine to get a person legally drunk; even 10 ounces of wine might be enough to make you legally drunk depending on your body weight. In fact, it's best to leave your car at home because you might be tempted to get behind the wheel when other means of transportation fails you.
An ingenious alternative is to join a wine tour, where you and a group of other people take a bus, jeep or limousine, and tour specific wineries. Here, you have a driver whose job is to drive you around so that you can drink as much wine as possible without the risk of a DUI.
If you do end up getting arrested, the best thing you can do for yourself is to get a DUI attorney to help you with the defense. The legal and financial consequences of a DUI conviction are serious, and a DUI attorney can help you avoid them.
