At first blush I assumed that this Hageland brand of chocolate was about as authentic as Haagen-Dasz, which is to say, not very.  This impression was only borne out by the website, where I could find absolutely no information about the company itself.  

They have a lot of information about how chocolate is made IN GENERAL, but nothing about the company, its facilities, or its location aside from "Belgium."  The Contact Us page lists an address in Hayward, CA.

One begins to wonder if this is "Belgian chocolate" in the same sense that Trader Joe's famous Two Buck Chuck is "Napa Valley wine."  In case you weren't aware, Charles Shaw wine is a subsidiary of Franzia, better known as the "wine in a box" company.  

Franzia owns a wine making facility in Napa Valley, it's true.  They ship grapes from all over the world to that facility to be made into wine.  Which is how they can justify calling it "Napa Valley wine."

With the complete lack of information forthcoming from the official website, I turned to the internet at large.  The second hit when you search for "Hageland chocolate" is from the Walmart website.  Which hardly inspires confidence.  I personally bought my bar at the Grocery Outlet, which similarly does not inspire confidence.

I was afraid I was in for another experience like the infamous Worst Chocolate I Have Ever Tasted, Sweet Obsession Milk Chocolate.  Luckily, despite the iffy provenance and mysterious origin of this bar, it turned out to be extremely delicious.

I have become smitten with high cocoa milk chocolate.  I prefer milk chocolate to dark, based mostly on the texture.  I used to think they were completely different things, but milk chocolate is just dark chocolate with milk added.  Although most milk chocolate in America hovers around 11% cocoa, there's no reason it couldn't be 80% or even higher.

As a 43% cocoa milk chocolate bar, this Ecuador bar is extraordinary.  If you have never tried a high cocoa milk chocolate bar, I can only urge you to seek one out immediately.  At its best, you get the rich depth of flavor of dark chocolate combined with the creamy texture of milk chocolate.  Superb!

You can see the clean snap in the picture above, as evidenced by the crumbs of chocolate that flaked off.  Each Ecuador bar is divided into fairly large squares.  My only complaint about this bar is that I would have preferred the squares be a little bit smaller.  

Cramming an entire big square into your mouth is a little bit much, but the chocolate is firm enough that it doesn't want to break cleanly across a square.  I tried taking a bite out of one, but it left behind some very unappetizing teeth marks.  (Shades of childhood Giant Hershey's Kiss trauma.)

The flavor is remarkably complex, almost nutty, with flavors of coffee and raisin.  The language on the back of the package gives the impression that this is a single-origin chocolate, made of arriba beans from Ecuador.  But it has enough weasel words that I'm not entirely clear if that's the case, or if the flavor is just meant to evoke "single-origin arriba beans from Ecuador."

But who's quibbling?  It's delicious.  And I dare say it's the tastiest thing you will ever find at a Walmart.