Those plump little cherubs smiling rapturously from the depths of dark Baroque paintings have reason to be happy, I thought as I listened to tour guide Niall Stewart expound on "the angels' share," a term used to describe the amount of Irish whiskey that evaporates daily while aging in casks.

"No one knows what the angels actually do with their share," Stewart said, as we began our tour of the Old Jameson Distillery in Dublin. "But we do know 6,000 bottles of Jameson are lost a day, floating in the air."

I'd heard a lot of stories about those lucky angels, and I'd been exceptionally lucky myself: I was on the seventh day of a marathon eight-day journey exploring the Irish Whiskey Trail, tasting my way across the island, learning how to sip and savor one of its most intriguing exports — its ultra-smooth whiskeys.

My do-it-yourself tour was so pleasurable that I wasn't bothered that at many of the tastings, Irish whiskey was compared with America's native spirit, bourbon. And that bourbon — a favorite in my Kentucky-born-and-bred family for generations — always seemed to come out on the losing end of the comparison.

The tour, stretching north and south from Dublin, took me to four whiskey- tasting centers. It also provided a quick look at some of Ireland's most popular sights and turned out to be a first-rate bargain: Two friends and I took advantage of off-season prices, scoring round-trip airfare from Los Angeles International Airport to Dublin in October for only $508 each.

Make a difference. Donate to The Advertiser Christmas Fund.