A Costa Rican Chorreador Reached the Hands of Pope Leo

When the papal plane lifted off from Rome bound for Madrid, somewhere in the cabin was a wooden coffee stand that would have looked utterly at home in a tico grandmother’s kitchen. By the time it landed, that humble chorreador had become one of the most talked-about gifts of Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic visit to Spain — and a small, unlikely triumph for the artisans and designers of Costa Rica.

A grandmother’s wish put a chorreador on the papal plane 🛫

The gift was the work of Costa Rican journalist Jovel Álvarez, who has reported from Europe as a correspondent for Teletica and happened to be aboard the same flight carrying the pontiff to Spain. He did not let the proximity go to waste. As the Pope passed, Álvarez offered him an artisanal chorreador, hand-decorated with Costa Rican motifs, along with a bag of national coffee.

The idea was not entirely his own. Álvarez later explained that his 99-year-old grandmother had pressed him to bring something meaningful, insisting that the Pope ought to drink coffee the way ticos do. So he carried the most honest answer to that wish he could find: not a souvenir, but the actual instrument of the ritual, the chorreador itself.

The Pope already knew exactly what he was holding ☕

What surprised Álvarez most was that no explanation was necessary. Pope Leo XIV, who spent time in Costa Rica earlier in his life, looked at the stand, opened his mouth in evident surprise, nodded, and answered “Sí, sí,” recognizing the object instantly. Coverage of the moment recorded his verdict on the coffee itself in five emphatic words: “¡Muy rico el café de Costa Rica!”

It was a brief exchange, the kind that lasts seconds in a crowded aircraft aisle. But for a country that treats its coffee as a point of national pride, watching the head of the Catholic Church recognize a chorreador on sight was its own quiet vindication.

Behind the object lies a deliberate Costa Rican design story 🎨

According to the project’s own account, the piece was not pulled off a shelf. It emerged from a collaboration between two Costa Rican creative outfits: Plinc, a design studio that has spent years refining the chorreador into a modern, functional object without abandoning its traditional soul, and El Canto, a project devoted to celebrating national culture through art. Plinc engineered the brewer’s functional form — the wooden stand built to hold the cloth bolsita and coax the aromas upward — and the artist Luis Madrigal of El Canto then transformed that working object into a painted work of art.

That division of labor matters, because it mirrors what the chorreador has always been: a tool first, beautiful second, and never one at the expense of the other. The decision to send a working brewer rather than a decorative replica is itself a statement about how ticos see the object.

This is bigger than one cup of coffee, and the artisans feel it 💜

For the designers and artists who built it, the journey of this single chorreador has been a source of real pride and emotion. It is the kind of moment that validates a slow, unglamorous craft — the years spent insisting that a folk brewing device deserves the same care as fine design.

The chorreador has endured in Costa Rican homes for roughly 150 years precisely because it refuses to be hurried. Hot water chorrea, pours, through coffee grounds held in a cloth filter, and the drops fall one by one into the cup below. That patient, unmistakable sound — the plinc of each drop — is so woven into tico memory that one design studio took it for its name. To watch that ritual recognized on the world stage is to watch something deeply ordinary and deeply Costa Rican be seen for what it is.

Why a folk coffee maker belongs in a story about national identity 🇨🇷

The chorreador is not the fanciest way to make coffee, and that is the point. It is the way coffee has been made in Costa Rican kitchens for generations: simple, communal, unhurried, the opposite of a button-pushed pod machine. A cafecito brewed this way is an invitation to slow down and share.

So when a chorreador travels from a local workshop to the Vatican by way of a journalist, a 99-year-old grandmother, and a pair of stubbornly proud creative firms, it is carrying more than coffee. It is carrying a small argument about how life is best lived, one unhurried drop at a time. Pura vida, all the way to Rome.

Brew your own cup the way ticos have for 150 years. Explore our handcrafted chorreadors → shop the collection