We consider a classical (capillary) model for a one-phase liquid in equilibrium. The liquid (e.g. water) is subject to a volume constraint, it does not mix with the surrounding vapour (e.g. air), it may come into contact with solid supports (e.g. a container), and is subject to the action of an analytic potential field (e.g. gravity). The region occupied by the liquid is described as a set of locally finite perimeter (Caccioppoli set) in R 3 ; no a priori regularity assumption is made on its boundary. The (twofold) scope in this note is to propose a weakest possible set of mathematical assumptions that sensibly describe a condition of stable equilibrium for the liquid-vapour interface (the capillary surface), and to infer from those that this interface is a smoothly embedded analytic surface. (The liquid-solid-vapour junction, or free boundary, can be present but is not analysed here.) The result relies fundamentally on the recent varifold regularity theory developed in [2], [3], and on the identification of a suitable formulation of the stability condition.