The Whisky Bar Patio at Wayne Gretzky Estates

A barbecue smokehouse is not the first thing you expect to find on a winery estate, but that is what runs on the patio at Wayne Gretzky Estates. The kitchen smokes brisket, pulled pork, and chicken on a property better known for its wine and its whisky, and the result is a patio where a tray of smoked proteins arrives beside a Niagara pour. It sits on Niagara Stone Road, in the wine corridor outside Niagara-on-the-Lake, and it treats the contradiction as the whole point: low-and-slow smokehouse cooking served in the middle of wine country, on an estate that most visitors arrive at for the tastings and the name on the gate.

The clearest read of the kitchen is the Smokehouse Platter — three proteins and two sides, with corn bread and coleslaw, and a protein list that runs from chopped brisket and pulled pork shoulder to smoked lemongrass chicken, tofu burnt ends, and hot-smoked pulled oyster mushroom. From there the menu fans out. There is a Smoked Double Patty Burger with jalapeno pickle sauce, a Chopped Brisket Hoagie dressed in whisky barbecue sauce, and a Smoked Lemongrass Chicken Banh-Mi carrying cilantro mayo and house pickles. The shareables lean louder: Firecracker Calamari with Indian mango pickle mayo, Hasselback Smoked Kielbasa with whisky mustard and warm pickle kraut, a Burratini cheese platter with grilled naan and hot honey, poutine built on spiced fries. A shredded kale Caesar with pretzel croutons and a S'mores sundae finished with torched marshmallow bracket the meal at either end, and the vegan proteins are not afterthoughts but full options on the platter.

What the menu says about the place is that it refuses to be a purist pit. A Texas smokehouse would not put a banh-mi and a mango-pickle calamari on the same page; this kitchen does, and the drinks follow the same logic. The cocktail list, the No. 99 Classics, is built on the estate's own spirits — an Ice Cask Manhattan with toasted maple sweet vermouth, a 99 Fashioned on Red Cask whisky, a Gretzky Caesar spiked with the estate's Ice Storm vodka and loaded with charcuterie and extreme beans. The bar is not a concession to the kitchen. It draws on what the distillery on the property produces, so the whisky in the glass and the whisky in the barbecue sauce come from the same place.

The cooking is led by Executive Chef Maurice Desharnais, with the cocktail program run by Estate Mixologist Alex Archer. That pairing is the tell — a kitchen and a bar that both source from the estate rather than treating the smokehouse and the distillery as separate operations. The smoke comes off the same property as the spirits, and the menu reads like it was built by people with the run of both the kitchen and the cellar.

The patio is the fixed point. Open since 2017 and heated for year-round service, it shifts with the season: cocktails and smokehouse sharing across the long tables in summer, and in winter The Rink draws skaters who come off the ice for warm food and a drink within sight of the vines. Weekdays from three to five, the happy hour menu trims the No. 99 cocktails, the Sauvignon Blanc, and the snack plates to a lower number, which makes the early-afternoon visit the value play before dinner pricing takes over. On Fridays the Tailgate To-Go package sends a smoked half chicken, brisket, and pulled pork home with corn bread, slaw, cucumber salad, sauces, and a pair of cocktails. The smoke, the wine, and the whisky share one address on Niagara Stone Road, and the patio is where they all land.