State government will do anything to save its liquor monopoly -- to the point of even selling wine from machines.

That marginal added convenience might make some consumers happy, but the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's pitch for proposals to set up a network of 100 vending machines, each of which would stock 500 bottles of wine, is not nearly the step the system needs to take.

The government liquor operation, which handles all sales of bottled wine and spirits in Pennsylvania, wants to be pro-consumer in assorted ways, except the one that really counts -- letting private merchants handle the trade.

Since the repeal of Prohibition, state employees have sold wine and spirits from government stores, and not always with customer-friendly hours. In time, some state stores were allowed to be open late; since 2003, some have added Sunday hours. Four years ago, a handful of state stores were opened inside supermarkets, although customers have to use two checkouts -- one for food and one for alcoholic drink.

Now the PLCB is exploring the sale of wine from machines -- anything but private liquor merchants. The 100 "satellite wine kiosks," as the agency calls them, would be located in supermarkets and other places, linked electronically with the state and monitored via remote video and audio. Part of state linkage is for pricing and inventory control; part of it is to ensure, appropriately, that liquor is not sold to minors.

Although a detailed "request for proposal" for potential contractors can be found on the agency's Web site, the PLCB is taking no questions about the plan and it did not launch the idea with any fanfare. While alcohol-dispensing machines exist in other countries, we wonder about their security in Pennsylvania. Screening customers for age and ID is one thing, but how does a machine tell if a buyer is intoxicated?

Since the proposal declares that the wine machines must be installed and maintained without cost to the state, one presumes that the private vendor, by providing the machines, will earn something from the sale of each bottle.

If Pennsylvania is willing to go that far, why not just cut out the middleman -- or middle machine, in this case -- and allow sales by the kind of outlets that can reliably check for IDs and intoxication: private merchants licensed to sell wine and spirits from their own stores?