Where’s the fun in going on a wine tour and not having a drink? I know it’s terribly inelegant to gulp your way through the tastings, but it just seems such a waste, so environmentally unfriendly, to spit out a perfectly decent mouthful of wine. If you’re unsophisticated enough to feel the same way, then you’ll know about the Great Wine Tour Quandary.

If you do your own wine tour, you can’t drink because you’re driving. Which means you have to sign up for a group tour. This involves lots of discussion about how wine is made and being trapped on a minibus with six wine buffs, and is therefore worse than being sandpapered to death.

But, my fellow oeno-philistines, I have found a solution. A third way. And it’s so simple, you’ll want to celebrate by immediately necking a nice grand cru... What is it, you gargle? It’s a chauffeur-driven limo, of course. A private car, but someone else does the driving. He’ll know about wines, of course, but he’ll only speak when spoken to. It’s perfect.

Of course, you’re not going to find anything as déclassé as a chauffeur-driven limo in the traditionalist hills of Bordeaux. No, for this you have to go to Sonoma, California, where everything is more comfortingly gauche. Where the driver of my transfer bus is a great fan of the electric chair (“because hanging’s too darn good fer ’em”) and where my low-carb hotel breakfast consists of three eggs, ham, maple pecan sausage, bacon, sautéed spinach, mushrooms, coffee, tea and juice.

The latter explains why Phillip the chauffeur and his cool, black Lincoln are on time but I and my equally leaden friends are not. He doesn’t mind, though, he’s the chauffeur. And, by way of introduction, he says we can go where we want and do what we want. No, he won’t be taking us to any of the theme-park wineries as featured in the movie Sideways. Yes, he would look after us if we drank too much. No, he’s never known anyone to miss their flight home. And yes, he was once ordered by a couple halfway through an intensive day’s tasting to drive them to Reno to get married. Fortunately, their story didn’t end happily ever after. They passed out in Sacramento and called the whole thing off when they woke up, hungover, in Applegate.

WE START at the boutique winery of Ravenswood, suffer the quickest of tours (even when you’re not on a group tour, the vineyard owners can spring one on you), then start drinking. Bruce is an amiable chap with perfect teeth and the vestiges of an English accent, and he’s keen to show off his “no wimpy wines”. The phrase originates from “whimper”, as in the sound you make when you drink a wimpy wine. I always thought subtle was good — but the big zinfandels we try are delicious, and not at all wimpy. He recommends another couple of vineyards along the way and discourages us from a couple more: “Don’t go there... you can buy a suit in their gift shop. A suit, for chrissakes. It’s like being in Macy’s. Ridiculous.”

As we bid still-sober farewells, Phillip is there, boot popped to take our purchases, door open, standing to attention. I feel ever so slightly presidential. If only Phillip were called Parker or Jeeves, not Phillip.

Our next stop is The Wine Room (strapline: “The best damn tasting room in the valley”), where a hairy man in an intimidating heavy-metal T-shirt is hunched over the counter as we enter. Because I’ve watched too many episodes of America’s Most Extreme Police Death Killer Maniac Videos, my immediate thought as our eyes meet is that I’ve disturbed an armed robbery. The hairy T-shirt guy is clearly a convict on the run. When he makes good his escape, we’ll find a posh wine guy bound and gagged in the back room.

Turns out hairy T-shirt guy is the wine guy, and he’s called David. In the first five minutes of tasting, we also establish that Republicans are disgusting, that he’s proud of all his wines but not his daughters (“Well, I’m proud of one of ’em”) and that he thinks Sonoma is a much more genuine valley than Napa, its more famous neighbour (“where the vineyards charge you 25 bucks for valet-parking”.) Twenty minutes later, I’ve bought a bottle of Eeyore Barbera 2004, which David kindly signs. It has a picture of a dog on the label but is, I can report subsequently, amazing. DRINKING IN the morning is always more effective than drinking at more socially acceptable times of day like the evening. You stick out more. So I’m increasingly grateful for the low-carb breakfast as Phillip whisks us off to St Francis, another reputable winery where Big Tom serves us Big Reds, aided by an assistant armed with Big Canapés. My companions are becoming a bit giggly and our flight out of San Francisco is looming, so we neck the port Tom offers as a finale and zigzag out into the parking lot.

“One more, Parker, then you must take us home without sparing the horses, what,” I say. “Take us somewhere special.”

“Righto, milady,” replies Parker and hits the turbocharger. Our last vineyard for the road is my favourite... run by a down-to-earth Aussie called Chris Lockston, a former astrophysicist whose father and grandfather made wine down under. He displays the slightly mad, slightly obsessive, slightly tannic quality of a proper, devoted wine-maker. His winery consists of him, a big shed and a couple of fields. And once he’s established that we aren’t as poncey as our chauffeur-driven arrival would suggest, he is delighted to show off the fruits of his labours, and we are delighted to drink them.

In our four hours with Phillip, we entirely avoided the tourist traps set all over Napa and Sonoma, drank to our heart’s content without fear of a DUI charge and only had to listen to one explanation of how soil pH affects grapes. I didn’t even wake up in Reno the next morning, with a strange woman next to me and a marriage certificate on the dressing table.

Matt Rudd travelled as a guest of BA Holidays

Travel details: Pure Luxury Transportation (00 1 707 775 2920, www.pureluxurywinetours.com) charges £170 for four hours swanning about in a Lincoln. If you’re really, really tacky, or there are eight of you, go for a stretch limo, which costs £240 for four hours. Wine not included.

BA Holidays (0870 242 1276, www.baholidays.com) has a five-night California package from £1,039. This includes flights, car hire, three nights at the five-star St Regis in San Francisco and two nights at the four-star Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn.

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