Wine vending machines arrive in States: Sacre bleu! , say the French

Americans can now buy a bottle of wine out of a vending machine as if it were a Coke or a bag of Cheetos. No surprise how that's playing in France, the self-styled wine capital of the world and a place not known for its tolerance of bourgeois enterprise.

Well, the French are not only turning their nose up at this experiment in Pennsylvania -- the first in the U.S. -- they are downright concerned. In a villa overlooking the Mediterranean in Nice, Charly Bismuth sipped a Bordeaux that he bought from a human being and pondered the potential damage.

"Wine should be had in moderation and should not be so easily available," Bismuth said in French to WalletPop.

"That's great if you're a vagabond," Sonia PIpernos of Paris added.

In all fairness, what might appear to be tacky is actually Pennsylvania's way of working around its relatively strict liquor laws. Before the machines emerged, Pennsylvanians could buy alcohol only in state stores. The first two wine vending machines have popped up in Harrisburg supermarkets, with expansion to Philadelphia planned in September if all goes well.