http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13545
--- Comment #7 from Vincent Povirk madewokherd@gmail.com 2008-06-02 06:54:34 --- The /unix switch was added to wine start in 0.9.60. You'll either need to upgrade wine (see http://winehq.org/site/download-deb) or use a shell script.
If you have to run Wine as root, that is likely because you ran it first with sudo: http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-96bebfa287b4288974de0df23351f278b0d41014