Cupcakes, cocktail sausages, sliders—miniature foods have an extra dose of adorability that makes them hard to resist. The same goes for small cheeses. They are just the right size to tear through in an evening, the smallest ones served individually, atop a salad, say. Slightly larger ones can be paired with fruit, some slivers of honeycomb and perhaps a Saison ale as dessert for a small group.
There is a relationship between the size of a cheese and its taste. It's difficult to get the crystalline sharpness of a long-aged cheddar or the forest-floor funk of a mottled blue cheese in a tiny format, but you can get a surprising range of flavors in a small package, from bright and tangy to nutty and sharp to buttery and ethereal.
With small cheeses, there are no tattered rinds to clean up, no worries about proper storage of leftovers. They are lovely in part because they are fleeting. Often beautifully packaged, they're also a smart dinner-party gift.
The most common small-format cheeses are made with goat's milk. Liz Thorpe, author of "The Cheese Chronicles" and a vice president at Murray's Cheese in New York, said that petite cheeses were traditionally made by farm women for home consumption. Fresh chevre would be molded into cylinders and consumed at various stages of age. When eaten young, these cheeses, called 5) crottins ($5, murrayscheese.com), are moist, bright and tangy, and sometimes a bit chalky on the tongue; they might have background notes of hay, meadow flowers or citrus. Because they are relatively simple, fresh goat cheeses are often given additional flavors—marinated in oils, dusted with herbs or wrapped in leaves. 3) Cabecou feuille ($3, delaurenti.com), from Perigord, is a tiny button of cheese topped with cracked peppercorns and a bit of brandy before being wrapped in chestnut leaves. The result, a great match for walnut toast, has a slightly boozy aroma and could stand in for (or alongside) pâté. There are domestic leaf-wrapped beauties, too: 8) Up in Smoke($16, murrayscheese.com) is a particularly seductive little bundle. This gorgeous farmstead chevre from Oregon's Rivers Edge Chèvre is smoked and wrapped in maple leaves. It's the perfect way to add nuance to the old standby beet-and-chevre salad.
Something happens to little goat cheeses when they get some age—and a little geotrichum mold—on them. A crinkly rind develops, the cheese turns from white to blond, the interior gets smoother (sometimes a little runny) and the flavor goes from short, bright and sharp to something lingering, with savory tones of cashews and mushrooms. 1) Crottin de Chavignol ($6, murrayscheese.com) is perhaps the most famous of the small, aged goat cheeses produced in the Loire Valley—it pairs naturally with Sancerre. Inspired by Loire classics, a ripe 2) Bonne Bouche ($9, gourmet-food.com), from American goat-cheese masters Vermont Butter and Cheese, is gray from a dip in ash before aging and puckered with countless ruffles. Don't be scared off by its ghoulish exterior. It is a glorious cheese that expertly balances freshness and funk, citrus tang and creamy extravagance.
It is unusual for very small cheeses to be made with cow's milk. But there is a lovely lilliputian exception: 6) Saint Marcellin, a textured, oozy treat that is delicious in its own right and made even more winning by the little ceramic crock that protects the thin ivory rind on each delicate cheese ($8, delaurenti.com). You can throw the whole shebang in the oven for individual fondues on the fly. Some savvy American cheesemakers have taken to offering small cheeses with Camembert-like bloomy white rinds, including the soil-scientists-cum-cheesemakers who run Prairie Fruits Farm in Illinois. They make deliciously spreadable, mouth-coating cheeses, like the sheep's milk Ewe Bloom (currently out of season) and the goat's milk Angel Food ($15, murrayscheese.com). Beneath a bloomy rind, goat's milk can taste quite different: the Italian 7) Bocconcino di Langa, a small honey-hued puck, is a super soft and rich expression of the stuff, inflected with cellar tones of leather and mushroom ($7, delaurenti.com).
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