Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s property has got to be one of the coolest I’ve ever seen.
For starters, he decided to build a real deal, massive 300-acre Old Western town out in the woods back in his single days, mainly so him and his friends didn’t destroy his actual house:
“I wanted a place for me and my friends to hang out and I didn’t want to destroy my house.
We would drink a lot of beer and hang out and have fun and stay up all night.”
Dale Jr. was a well-known bachelor who liked to party hard for many years, and when he built a real home on the property that his family still lives in now, he hired a woman named Amy Reimann to do all of the interior design.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t really care at all about what she did with it in terms of picking out colors and carpet, and told her:
“Do it however you want it, because you’re going to be living in it one day.”
Yes, I know it sounds too good to be real, but it’s a true story, and he really did say that to her. I never knew Jr. was so dang smooth…
And as is turns out, he was right, because they’re married now and have two little girls together, Isla and Nicole, and still live in that house on an expansive property out in Mooresville, North Carolina (the same town where Jr. grew up).
The property also includes a NASCAR graveyard with tons of old cars sprinkled throughout, a garage where his team, Jr. Motorsports, used to be headquartered, and a treehouse, in addition to the famous Western town.
The town looks like something out of a movie set, and includes an air conditioned saloon with a full bar, and a tavern named Whiskey River (which is also the name of a real restaurant he owns in the Charlotte area), in addition to a chapel (and a jail) if you have a really wild night.
Mike Davis, who was Earnhardt’s managing director and current Dale Jr. Download podcast co-host, gave a full tour of it years back in 2018.
He told Graham that they would come back from a long weekend of racing on Sunday evenings, sit out in front of the “jail” and drink cold beer with their buddies while the sun set to relax and detach from the busy weekend… livin’ the dream.
And actually, Dale Jr. has said before that the inspiration for it all came from Willie Nelson, who has a similar Western town out on his ranch in Luck, Texas.
If you haven’t heard about the Western town before or have never seen all the cool buildings set up out there, this video is worth a watch:
Here’s a clip of Jr. and Amy talking about the house and how they met:
Cue up the “Whiskey River”:
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Beer Distributors Thought Dale Earnhardt Jr. Was Selling It On The Side
I mean, what did they expect from a guy driving the Budweiser car?
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. may have ended his career driving the Mountain Dew car, but he’s best known for the #8 Budweiser Chevy that he drove when he first entered NASCAR.
So you gotta think that the guy enjoyed himself a cold Bud every once in awhile.
Well, it may have been more than every once in awhile…
On this week’s episode of his podcast, The Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt sat down with Ty Norris, the former Vice President of Motorsports for DEI, the team that was founded by Dale Earnhardt Sr. and that Dale Jr. drove for during the early years of his career.
And it seems that one of the things Norris remembers about Earnhardt during those early years was how much he liked to party.
Actually that might be an understatement, because at one point Jr. was getting so much beer delivered to his house that the executives at Budweiser thought he was selling it.
As Norris recalls:
“I got a call from Tim Schuler from Budweiser one day, and Steve Uihlein, and they were like, ‘Hey, what’s going on over at Jr.’s house?’
And I said ‘What do you mean?’
Well, the local distributor just said, ‘The most beer I deliver to any retailer in the entire state of North Carolina is in Mooresville at Dale Jr.’s house.’
They said ‘Is he selling it?’
And you’re like ‘No, they’re drinking it.’
He goes ‘How the hell is he drinking so much beer? We’re delivering case after case after case and there’s not a store in the area, in the region, that’s consuming as much beer.'”
Junior was quick to point out that he wasn’t drinking all that beer by himself though:
“I had a lot of help drinking it.”
I mean, who wouldn’t want to have some beers at Dale Jr.’s house?
Norris and Earnhardt also go on to talk about one particular party that Jr. threw that he was particularly proud of, a New Year’s Eve party at a shop behind his house, when Jr. says that they must have gone through “100, 150 cases” of beer in a single night.
But not everybody got an invite to that party: Norris recalls Jr. coming to his office and asking him to fire a particular fabricator.
When Norris asked him why, Earnhardt had an epic response:
“Well, I’ve got this party going on and I’m sending out invitations…
And I don’t want to invite him. And if I don’t want to drink beer with him, I don’t want him working on my damn racecar.”
But don’t worry, the fabricator wasn’t fired. Norris said that he lasted until the end of DEI (although he admitted that he was a “strange guy”).
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has always been one of NASCAR’s most popular drivers, and has turned into one of the sport’s best ambassadors after his retirement.
And hearing these stories, it’s not hard to see why he’s so well-liked. It seems like Jr. knows the perfect way to win people over: Beer.
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) April 18, 2019
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Shares His Dad’s Signature Screwdriver Recipe
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is playing bartender today, showing all of us how to make his dad’s signature screwdriver.
He said that his dad, the late, great Dale Earnhardt Sr., only ever used Five Alive as his juice of choice, and if The Intimidator says that’s the way to make it, then that must be the best way to make it:
“This is the screwdriver that my dad used to drink. Had to be Five Alive and it’s hard to find these days. Not bad pops.”
I’m probably showing my age here, but I had never even heard of Five Alive until I saw this video… and now I really want to find some and try it out with that instead of regular orange juice. Five flavors in one? Not mad at it…
I mean, who doesn’t want to drink like Dale Sr.? Dale Jr. used the classic citrus flavor in this video, so I assume that’s the kind Sr. used, too.
For the vodka part of this screwdriver, Dale Jr. used his own brand, High Rock vodka, which recently he recently launched with his wife Amy, (shameless plug… not mad at it).
And how about that song choice in the background? Jr. has good taste in alcohol and music:
Might have to go mix one up myself this evening now…
