Prague Chocolate - Aluna 60% Dark With Hericium
Ranked in the Top 100 Chocolates in the World. Single-origin Colombian dark chocolate with Lion's Mane mushroom. Berry-driven, with a port-wine finish. Above-the-fold callout A 60% single-origin Colombian dark chocolate carrying 12% Hericium — the woody functional mushroom better known in English as Lion's Mane. It reads like a novelty and tastes like anything but: berries, cherry and cranberry up front, a port-wine depth on the finish, the mushroom folded in so cleanly it lends body rather than announcing itself. One of the more genuinely interesting bars Prague Chocolate makes. Origin & Craftsmanship The chocolate base is pure Aluna — ancient criollo crossed with trinitario, grown on a single family farm in Colombia, bought direct and sweetened with low-glycaemic coconut sugar. The Hericium is what makes this bar unusual: Prague Chocolate developed it following a challenge set by two Czech technical universities, as part of a supported research project, which is a rarer provenance line than most inclusion bars can claim. The mushroom is milled into the chocolate at 12%, with no palm oil, no gluten and nothing synthetic, so what you get is a functional bar built by fine-chocolate makers rather than a supplement wearing a chocolate coat. Flavor Profile This is where the bar earns its keep. The maker's own notes hold up on tasting: red and dark berries first — cherry, cranberry, blackberry — then a deep, almost wine-like finish that recalls port. The Hericium sits underneath as a soft, woody, savoury note that rounds the fruit rather than fighting it. At 60% it stays approachable, fruit-forward and balanced, not the earthy hit you might brace for from a mushroom bar. Tasting & Pairing Guide Let it melt slowly so the berry notes and the port finish have room to arrive. It pairs, fittingly, with an actual glass of port or a medium-bodied red that echoes the dark-fruit register, and it's a natural after a black coffee if you want to keep the functional theme running through the cup. For something contrasting, an aged, salty hard cheese snaps the fruit into focus. This is a bar for the curious — the Lion's Mane crowd and the fine-chocolate crowd meet here. Summary The Aluna 60% with Hericium is Prague Chocolate at their most inventive: single-origin Colombian cacao, coconut-sweetened, carrying a functional Lion's Mane mushroom developed through a university research project, and tasting of berries and port rather than anything medicinal. Functional, fruit-forward, and genuinely different — for the drinker who wants their chocolate to do a little more.