But....you were driving from one state to another, right? It wasn't at an airport. Who the hell knows if Texas was involved !

Yes, yes..driving from a day trip in Mexico back into Texas. If I meet you someday (!!) I will tell you something else about that border crossing... how my co-worker hid something on the Texas side before the crossing and we had to spend an hour poking around the dirt and rocks trying to find it after we returned from the Mexican border town later that day!

OH, I'm all ears!!!

But going from Mexico back to Texas with kahlua I'm quite sure invokes a whole different set of laws from those governing bringing, or shipping, wine back from Europe.

Pure conjecture on my part except I happen to know a bunch of international trade/import-export lawyers, and it seems like everything they do is as arcane and complex as possible.

No doubt true...I seem to have gotten sidetracked here...buying Kahlua in Piedras Negras and trying to sneak it back in the trunk might be a bit different than the experience of buying Brunello, for example, in Montalcino and bringing it home on Alitalia!!....

The laws have changed, but it used to be that U.S. Customs applied the law of your state. Thus if you came back from Europe and landed on the East Coast with alcohol, it was confiscated if you came from California. I remember coming back from Tijuana, and the alcohol was mine because I had a non-California driver's license. I think that California has dropped this ban on imported alcohol, but other states might not have dropped it.