My parents are old friends with a guy named Paul Wofford, who was the winemaker at Bargetto Winery in Santa Cruz for many years when I was a young man. Bargetto is the parent winery that makes the Chaucers brand of mead and other fruit wine.
My family and I would go down to Bargetto to taste wine and catch up with Paul when I was younger. He'd bring out the Chaucers for us younguns, which was my first introduction to mead.
The Chaucers they had at the winery tastes a lot better than the stuff they've got on the shelf, which leads me to agree that the bottles must be badly mistreated. When it hasn't been abused, Chaucers isn't that bad. Produced with an eye more for easy quaffing than quality, yes, but not entirely the swill its reputation suggests.