What would you have done in this situation

So I am a hostess at a winery and my job is serving wine, wine education, things like that. I’m really knowledgeable at what I do and 98% of the time I don’t have an issue with tables. Obviously this is wine country where I work so there’s a lot of wineries and lots of opportunities for people to be drunk. The bane of my existence is when people have 2-3 tastings scheduled in a day and come to me already feeling a little buzzed because I as a server can face major consequences for over serving. Normally I just insist tables have some food and water before I serve them and then see how they’re doing, 99% of the time it sobers them up enough that I can safely serve them. The other 1% of the time I’m left dealing with drunk entitled assholes who always insist they “know someone important”

Today I encountered that dreaded 1%. So before the concierge even handed me the ticket for the table she says “hey I’m not sure if you’re gonna be comfortable serving them they already seem pretty drunk idk if you wanna just talk to them and see but they’re acting pretty drunk already.” I say okay I’ll check it out. I come over and find the typical signs of intoxication, can’t stop giggling, red faces, wobbling their heads a lot, and they’re complaining they’re table is leaning too far to one side (the table was completely flat on the ground and none of my other guests had and issue with it the whole day) I ask some questions to get them talking so I can try and gauge them “how’s it going where’ve we visited today? How are we feeling?” They tell me they just came from the winery next door and slur through part of telling me this. Major major red flags are going off for me. I tell my manager I’m not comfortable serving them full tastings and ask to serve them only shared tastings (less than 6 total ounces of wine per person) AFTER they’ve had food and water.

They have some food and water but still 3 out of 4 of the women are very wobbly and giggly and I’m still uncomfortable with serving them. I ask my 2 coworkers if they’re comfortable taking them instead and they both say no way they don’t want to risk over serving them. I go to my manager again who is saying to just serve them anyway so they’re happy. I bring the first pour in a carafe that has enough for 2 people so 3 oz to be split 4 ways. I explain that it’s a 2 person pour to be shared between the four of them and that if they’re feeling up to it after the flight I can serve them a bottle or glass but just to be safe and make sure no one is overserved for now we’re going to do shared flight.

This is when one woman decides to say “can we get a second one of these so we all have more?” I kindly explain again that to be on the safe side and not overserve I’m going to keep them doing a shared flight and we can revisit it at the end of the flight if I feel it’s safe. This is when she decides to complain to me and say she can’t believe this, she’s never encountered such awful service, how dare I, she personally knows the winemaker, blah blah.

Her friends proceed to tell me “it’s fine really it’s fine don’t worry” I am 17 weeks pregnant and honestly over this by that point so I just walk away with an “I’m sorry you feel that way” When I return to this table to see if they’re ready for the next wine they tell me that they’re not going to do the flight at all now and they just want to pay for their food and go. Fine by me let me ring you up so you can get out of my section. I get yet another round of complaint from the same woman but they go.

And just to give a little context for those unaware of the penalties for over serving someone here’s some quick googles

So even though these women had a driver (so they said at least, that was never confirmed) if they had say fallen in the parking lot and injured themselves I could face criminal liability for overserving them. At the end of the day I felt like there was just too much on the line for me to serve them and had my manager not forced me to serve them I would have told them they needed to go and come back another time before visiting another winery.

My question is what would you have done? Was I being unreasonable or not? I’m curious to see other peoples perspective on this because I know I’m going to have a nasty yelp review waiting for me and an earful from my manager next shift. Should I have just risked it and let them have full tastings anyway?

Edit for clarification:

A full flight at my place is 5 wines each an ounce and a half serving. So about 7.5 ounces total. Not to mention our wines are anywhere from 14%-18% pretty damn heavy compared to most dinner wines people are used to.

So my manager wanted me to still serve visibly intoxicated people 3.75 ounces per person of decently heavy wine. Just to “make and keep them happy” the two other servers I was with refused to serve them so as the server who’s been here the least amount of time she insisted I still serve them.