Anyone for humble pie?

One of my favourite Gershwin songs is called They All Laughed and the clever lyric tells how people scorned the likes of Columbus, the Wright Brothers who built the first plane, and even Hershey and his chocolate bar — who all proved their detractors wrong. It's time for a new verse along the lines of: "They all laughed at Jennings and his brewery, they said Marston's wouldn't let him survive..."

When national giant Marston's added the Lakeland brewery to

its copious portfolio in 2005, the brewing industry agreed with one voice that Jennings would be marked for closure. The reasons were simple, the wiseacres said: "Marston's only wants the pubs. The brands aren't well known and the brewery is too remote, miles from anywhere and too far from the motorway network."

It was a view I went along with. Now, after all the Christmas bingeing, it's good for me to eat some humble pie. Jennings is not only alive and well, but is positively flourishing and glows with the investment Marston's has pumped into the site. The beers can now be found far from Cumbria and are available through Ringwood and Wychwood, other Marston's acquisitions, in the deep south.

Marston's quickly invested a quarter of a million pounds in the Jenning's site. It has since added to that by installing three new fermenting vessels. The site — one of the finest in the country at the confluence of the Cocker and Derwent rivers and at the foot of Cockermouth Castle — now has 15 fermenters and has increased production by 40%.

The dramatic news at the Cocker-mouth brewery is that, despite the repeated claims that real ale is doomed, Jennings is geared to cask beer production. It brews 50,000 barrels a year, it can expand that to 70,000, and 70% of the end product comes in cask form. There are minimal amounts of "smooth flow" while the bottled versions are doing well as a result of national deals with supermarkets: packaged beer now accounts for 15% of production and helps give the brewery national recognition.

It's good to see the brewery surviving and flourishing, as we can't afford to lose companies with such deep roots in our brewing traditions and history. It was founded in 1828 in the village of Lorton and moved to Cockermouth in 1874 to both keep up with demand for its beers and to take advantage of the constant supply of pure, soft Lakeland water that gushed from two boreholes on the site.

Rebecca Adams is the second brewer at Jennings — she learnt her brewing skills with Vaux in Sunderland — and she showed me round a site I have visited on several previous occasions. The cool, whitewashed rooms have stayed the same in some respects — the hop store with whole flower Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings, the malt store with the finest Maris Otter grain — but other areas show the impact of Marston's money.

The ancient mash tun is now a museum piece and has been replaced by a smart new, wood-clad one. Once the sugary extract has been produced, it's pumped up one floor to a large copper, where the boil with hops takes place. The aroma and bitterness of the hops infuses with the sweet wort and the liquid is then clarified in a hop back, cooled and run to the fermenters to allow yeast to develop the alcohol.

It's a flexible plant that can handle short runs of 50 barrels and longer ones of 150 barrels, Rebecca said. The main beers are Cumberland Ale, Jennings Bitter, the succulent bronze ale Cocker Hoop and the porter-style Sneck Lifter. But Jennings now brews as many as a dozen seasonal beers a year, while it bravely still produces a Dark Mild that is in serious decline. It's a wonderfully roasty and surprisingly hoppy version of mild and it bemuses me that people don't want to drink it in greater quantities.

Gaynor Green, Jenning's marketing manager, is delighted to see her beers receiving national recognition through the Marston's chain. But she gets maximum pleasure when she sees them doing so well in the north-west and the north-east.

She worked for Northumbria Inns and joined Jennings when the

Cockermouth company bought the group, which gave it presence in

the north-east with 30 pubs. Jennings now has an estate of 136 in

Lancashire and Yorkshire as well as the far north. They are all tenanted or leased houses — there are no managed outlets.

Gaynor is a pub person to her fingertips. She is never happier than when she is visiting a Jennings pub and says one key reason for the growth in popularity of the

Cockermouth beers is that Cumbria is no longer just a summer haunt for tourists.

"Fewer than half a million people live in Cumbria," she said, "but we get 15 million tourists a year and they now come all year round." The importance of the Marston's link,

she adds, is that visitors discover Jennings beers in the lakes and can then drink them again in other parts of the country: "I call it completing the circle."

I call it good news for the cask beer sector. Against all the industry wisdom, Jennings forges ahead. As the Gershwin brothers put it: "Ho, ho, ho, who's got the last laugh now?"