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Called a "wine kiosk," it's the latest concept being pushed by the state-run Liquor Control Board as a way to reduce hassles for consumers.
The kiosks - looking like large refrigerators with opaque glass built into a wood frame - would be placed in about 100 supermarkets across the state to finally make it possible to buy wine and food in the same place in Pennsylvania.
Right now, wine can be purchased only in the state's 600 wine and spirits shops or directly from wineries in Pennsylvania. The kiosks would be an alternative.
But the idea of buying fine wine out of a vending machine has been roundly criticized, even ridiculed, by oenophiles who see it as an insult to what should be a leisurely and thoughtful process.
Randy Torban of ClassicWines.com, a Pennsylvania-based Internet clearinghouse for learning about and buying wine, put it this way: "When people buy their wine, they expect a small touch of class to be involved. You don't get that from a machine."
The kiosks have also raised privacy questions - think being fingerprinted and monitored by people operating from remote locations - and concerns about whether they would make wine more accessible to minors.
"It's silly, and it's gimmicky," said Daniel Donahoe, a former wine and spirits retailer who now produces wines in California's Sonoma County.
Liquor Control Board chairman Patrick J. "P.J." Stapleton III said the kiosks were about modernizing and giving customers what they wanted: one-stop shopping for food and wine.
"The focus right now," Stapleton said, "is on what the consumer wants."
He said the idea of kiosks in supermarkets had grown out of a conversation he had a year ago about how biometric technology could be used to sell wine and spirits.
In general, biometrics is a science that uses physical attributes such as fingerprints or irises for personal identification.
Although some European and Asian countries have machines that dispense alcoholic beverages, wine kiosks would make Pennsylvania unique in the United States.
This year, the Liquor Control Board issued a request for bid proposals from companies interested in providing the technology.
One responded: Simple Brands of Bala Cynwyd. Company officials declined to discuss their proposal, including the cost, saying the bidding process prohibited them.
President Jim Lesser also would not disclose details about the company, but did say that "extraordinary steps were taken to design a system that can't be abused from a privacy standpoint."
He also said the kiosk "looks far more like a fine mahogany wine cellar than any type of vending unit."
But a summary of Simple Brands' bid obtained by The Inquirer gives a bit more detail. It says the company would build the machines and license or lease them to the Liquor Control Board, whose employees would stock and monitor them.
The machines would carry about a dozen different wines and hold up to 500 bottles, and the opaque windows would prevent minors from viewing the bottles.
To use the machines, customers would have to register at the supermarket with the help of a Liquor Control Board employee. The registration would include providing fingerprints and a valid credit card, and allowing an infrared arm scan.
After that, users could go to any machine and place their arm and hand on a sensor. Once their identity was verified and the machine determined they were not intoxicated, the glass would clear and they could make their selection, which would arrive in a sealed package.
Despite the sci-fi trappings, the entire process would take no more than a few minutes.
The kiosks would not be staffed, but Liquor Control Board employees at a remote location would track purchases, according to the summary.
Purchasing histories could be monitored to weed out potential problem drinkers. And special identification numbers etched on the bottles would make it possible to trace them back to the buyer.
The Liquor Control Board has yet to review the bid fully, Stapleton said, but he stressed that "if we can't guarantee that they are going to be safe, they will have no future in Pennsylvania."
And Stapleton countered the argument that machines have no class by saying they would display labels and wine-tasting notes.
Jonathan Newman, who resigned as Liquor Control Board chairman last year and now supplies out-of-state retailers with discounted wines, said he didn't like the kiosk idea.
"I am very uncomfortable with this Big Brother concept of having this unknown person viewing me and my personal information over a video monitor," he said.
Torban, of ClassicWines.com, argued that if the board truly wanted to improve convenience, it should allow wine to be sold on supermarket shelves.
That, of course, would entail privatizing liquor sales in Pennsylvania, a concept that has been debated off-and-on in Harrisburg for more than a decade.
Wendell W. Young, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents Liquor Control Board employees, has a problem with privatization, which he believes would take liquor-sale profits "out of the hand of Pennsylvania taxpayers and give them away to the private sector."
He does not, however, have a problem with Liquor Control Board-run kiosks.
"I guess for some of us folks who are middle-aged, these kiosks may sound crazy at first, but we're living in a world where technology is changing things," Young said. "This is just another example of that."
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