If you ever wanted to know how Gulliver felt waking up in Lilliput, take a walk into the wine cellar at Per Se, Thomas Keller’s Michelin miracle on the fourth floor of Columbus Circle’s Time Warner building.

Lined up like soldiers along the right-hand side of the cellar’s entryway are the cutest little bottles you ever did see. Italian producer Gaja’s barbaresco has been cut down to 375ml size. The syrah in the Domain de Vieux Telegraph Chateauneuf-du-Pape has gone petit.

Every major restaurant in New York has a few half-bottles, just for novelty’s sake. Per Se, however, has more than 80. What’s going on? Their wine room is small, but not that small.

“We probably sell more half-bottles than full bottles,” sommelier James Hayes, whose compact height is a perfect compliment to those demi-flasks, said. A visit to the restaurant bears this claim out. Large men in black tuxedos transport miniature pinot noirs and Chablis across the hushed room with regularity.

Per Se is so committed to the concept of doing things by halves, as it were, that Mr. Hayes does not bridle at calling their efforts a “campaign.” “If a husband and a wife sit down, maybe they only want to drink one full bottle of wine,” he said, “so why not drink a half bottle of white and a half bottle of red? I see it as an extension of the by-the-glass program. It’s something people are seeking out now. Restaurants are finding it is very beneficial, especially with a setup like ours, with multicourse smaller portions.”

It wasn’t always easy to find pintsized versions of the wine world’s big boys. In the past, half bottles carried a stigma. They were not for the serious wine-lover, the thinking went. They evoked images of the lonely solo diner, the wine lightweight, and the parsimonious. But there’s nothing like a chance to make the list at a Thomas Keller restaurant to turn a winery’s attitude around.

“We’ve got great relationships with a lot of people, especially in California,” Mr. Hayes, who goes by Jimmy, and is preternaturally poised for a man of only 26, said. “People who haven’t been making half-bottles will try to create the possibility of them doing it for us. We have quite a few who are just doing that for our restaurants. We can happily say that some wines — in that format — are exclusive to us.”

Among those exclusives is a succulent, zippy Spatlese Riesling from German great Dr. Loosen. The grapes for this bottling come from a corner of the vintner’s Himmelreich vineyard used for no other purpose. And then there’s the “Vare” Bianco, a Napagrown blend of Fruili varietals Tocai Friuliano, Sauvignon Blanc, and Ribolla Gialla created by Keller wine director Paul Roberts, and winemakers Abe Schoener and Mike Thrash.

Of course, there are plenty of regular-size vessels among the 1,200 wines found on the Per Se list, which is reprinted daily. It’s a bit of a tight fit in the restaurant’s glass fish bowl of a cellar, which is shaped like a backward “F” laid on its side. A sheath of white Jerusalem limestone lines the bottom half of the outside wall. (Decoration, not insulation, is its function.)

The left side of the cellar corridor Mr. Hayes calls “the main drag” is stacked with white Burgundy. The list is fully 50% French, and old Bordeaux and Burgundy are among the big cellars.

Mr. Hayes is on the floor most nights and some days — one of the lesser known aspects of Per Se is that it serves lunch Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The menu is the same and the view of Central Park perhaps more spectacular. The sommelier said he enjoys his confabs with the customers, and points out the fact that he can offer them whites chilled at either 55 degrees or 45 degrees. The option, though, is lost on the two thirds of Per Se’s clientele that order red. This, Mr. Hayes said diplomatically, “is an interesting situation, because most of the food is geared more toward white wine. The cooking is rich, but it’s delicate. I like to suggest whenever possible, ‘Would you like to try a white first?'”

Mr. Hayes is a white-wine man himself, though one of shifting allegiances. “Two summers ago I was on a German Riesling kick,” he said. “Last summer I was on an Austrian Riesling kick. I think I’ve got a Sauvignon Blanc kick coming up.”

But those whims are as nothing to the sommelier’s ongoing half-bottle kick. For Mr. Hayes, the quest goes on. He recently secured a white Gaja “Rossj Bass” 2005 for the half-bottle menu. And he has his wish list. “I’d like to see more Spanish wines in halfbottle. Rhone valley white wine has typically been hard to find in half bottles. I’m tasting a couple today, which I’m really excited about. It’s tough to find Chateaunauf-du-Pape Blancs in half bottles.” Then again, it’s tough to find those in full bottles, too.