Oh, You're Sober? There's A Sommelier For That Now, Too
Plus: How the jewels from the Louvre heist ended up at Paris Fashion Week, why you shouldn't have FOMO about Snow Polo, and swan management
Good afternoon, all. And happy snow day to those who celebrate. I am in Southeast Florida for a few days, having left New York just in time on Saturday morning. I have been following the storm the way one follows an ex’s life on Instagram: with interest but from a safe distance.
Did you see this Bloomberg piece about the rise of water sommeliers? Everyone is getting sober, so now they have a sommelier for that too.
But Bloomberg’s take is that the popularity of water sommeliers is about branding and business, with companies like Evian and Danone positioning water as something to be discussed and upsold. That framing is accurate, but read socially, I think this is less a market phenomenon than a cultural response to widespread sobriety. As alcohol steps back from the table, water has moved in to absorb rituals that once belonged to wine, including expertise and ceremony. So I decided to dig a little deeper for us.
Water sommeliers aren’t completely new, they were just even more niche a decade ago. In 2015, Martin Riese was reported as the only water sommelier in the United States, an oddity attached to a single restaurant menu in Los Angeles. Now, more than a decade later, the Fine Water Academy (yes, that’s real), founded by water expert Michael Mascha, has certified over 400 water sommeliers worldwide, a number that quietly tracks with the way that long, expensive dinners now unfold when fewer people are drinking.
Restaurants have adapted quickly. At Gwen in Los Angeles, Riese’s water program has been widely reported to generate close to $100,000 a year, with guests selecting bottled waters with the seriousness once reserved for wine. At The Inn at Little Washington, rare glacier waters have appeared on the menu at around $95 a bottle, complete with origin notes and formal presentation. Luxury hotels have been doing this even longer. The Ritz Paris offers a dedicated water menu alongside its wine list, treating still and sparkling selections as part of the ceremony rather than an afterthought, a posture that has filtered into other high-end dining rooms.
This is what happens when sobriety becomes normal but hierarchy still needs a surface. Water is no longer just hydration. It is where discernment goes when it lacks wine as a landing pad. And the wealthy have always found a way to make abstention interesting. Now how long till we normalize $95 bottles of water?
Until then, let’s see what else has been going on the past few days…
This weekend, I went to my brother’s new church, Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach. (You know, the one next to the Breakers’ golf course). I am not a regular churchgoer to, uh, say the least. I did, however, spend a couple of years working at Architectural Digest, which means I tend to notice buildings before belief systems. A gray stone façade, a 130-foot bell tower, and a cloistered courtyard tangled with pink hibiscus that looks less like a place built for penance than one designed to host very polite conversations about money. When the Reverend mentioned the church’s retail store, Church Mouse, had been included on the New York Times list of the 50 best clothing stores in America, I thought he was joking. “I just love saying that,” he smiled. Upon further investigation, it was the only store in Florida on the list. I also noticed during the service that two of the acolytes were wearing beige-and-black goatskin and grosgrain Chanel slingbacks, and another had on Gucci loafers. The NYT list began to feel less surprising. Tariro Makoni of Trademarked later recognized the courtyard during the potluck on my Instagram story and confirmed that the Church Mouse is worth a visit. (Church doesn’t come up often here, but it will reappear on Wednesday, in the context of how congregations handle it when attendance itself becomes the awkward part…)
The New York Post found a Reddit thread that crowd-sourced hundreds of people about how the wealthy really live. My favorites include: “swan management” for private ponds and orchid daycare.
All the jewels at the Schiaparelli show at Paris Fashion Week were replicas of those stolen during the 2025 Louvre heist, according to the Instagram of FT’s fashion editor Elizabeth Paton.
Speaking of the Louvre, it’s closed yet again, the fourth time the museum has shut its doors since mid-December. (Getting onto European museum lists in other languages continues to be a strangely satisfying exercise.)
Ah, Charvet. A shirt brand people treat like doctrine. The New York Times goes deep on the Place Vendôme institution, which reentered the broader conversation after its appearance in Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2026 show, and the men who return to the same counters year after year to debate collars, cuffs, fabric bolts, and fit with almost monastic focus. I really enjoyed this piece. It also made me want to get some good shirts and start treating them better (I am capital H hard on my clothes). But the piece is really less about clothes than about the pleasure of mastery, repetition, and getting something exactly right in a world that rarely rewards that kind of patience anymore.
Permit day, East Hampton edition. The village has tightened the rules around its annual beach-permit day after realizing residents were sending caretakers to stand in line, prompting Mayor Jerry Larsen to clarify the vibe: “It turns out people were sending their caretakers, and that was definitely not the idea behind this. If you can afford a caretaker, you can afford to pay the $750.” Permits go on sale Thursday, January 29th.
Having FOMO about Snow Polo? Don’t. A friend who attended said it “wasn’t the same this year,” lacking the luster of past seasons. “The guest list widened too much, and it changed the atmosphere,” a veteran attendee told me. If you were among the roughly 26,000 people there over three days and are still in St. Moritz, there’s a pivot: The I.C.E. St. Moritz, January 30–31, a high-gloss concours where museum-grade collector cars are displayed and driven across the frozen lake.
I somehow missed that American Psycho had returned to London, but it opened on Friday. If you’re there between now and March, it might be worth seeing, if not for depth then for atmosphere. Reviews have called it “sexy,” while also describing the lead performance as oddly hollow, which feels almost beside the point. What’s still compelling isn’t the violence so much as the upkeep: the grooming, the discipline, the constant self-surveillance, all of which feels even more familiar now than it did in the original Wall Street era.
Credit where it’s actually due: New friend of the letter Noëmie Leclerq-Sabbah caught that we cited her reporting on “Birkin gatekeeping” last week, but credited the wrong publication. Anyone who’s spent months reporting a story knows that feeling. Do read Noëmie’s original piece, and the rest of her work at Glitz.Paris.
I’ve been getting a surprisingly large number of suggestions for things to write about, especially considering I’ve only been up and running for nine days. If you don’t hear back from me, it’s likely because my email (carson@readrps.com) has been glitchy. Feel free to DM me on either account, or send a carrier pigeon. Whatever works.
RPS got a shout-out in Page Six yesterday. This ride is going to be fun. I’m glad you’re all here with me for it.
So fun
Easily my new favorite Substack.