You CAN bring wine in your luggage. If you wrap it in your clothes there's no reason it won't survive the trip.
If I can't bring wine, I usually do fun bath and beauty stuff. One year I brought a whole bunch of hand-specific things to a friend who was a server and had really beat-up fingers and cuticles. I've also been known to bring an expensive beauty item (as in $20-30), something that my friend would love to have but can't bring herself to waste that much money on for one little item. Let's see, a book on identifying wines for a woman who had recently shown interest in my wine selection. A book of elegant but simple appetizers for a new cook/hostess. A coffee table book about crazy shoes for my shoe crazy mother.
If you go to Border's (or similar) and look at the clearance tables there are usually dozens of beautiful coffee table books and cookbooks for 50% off or more.