Apologies for the long delay in replying - I'm afraid I had to download
/ install Kubuntu (in a Vbox - not particularly fast :-) ) to check this.

Entering the following two commands in a terminal worked fine for me

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get install wine1.3

winecfg ran OK and created the expected ~/.wine directory structure.

I wouldn't recommend installing wine1.2 (unless you have a specific need
for that version, in which case you don't need the first command above
as it's in the universe repository) as it is now rather old and receives
little, if any, attention. The 1.3 branch has moved much farther
forward and has fixed a very large number of bugs that are still in the
1.2 branch.