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Jimenez Julien, the person behind CellarShip

Founder of MLJ, SASU, author of this product, and the one who answers the email when a release goes sideways on a Thursday.

Why a wine club release desk exists

I did not grow up in wine. I came to it the way most software people come to a trade: someone asked for help with a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet turned out to be the whole business. In 2023 a friend who ran a 480 member club in the Sierra Foothills called me on the Sunday before a release because a shared workbook had been edited by three people at once and the hold column no longer lined up with the member column. We fixed it that night by hand, comparing printouts on a barrel head. It took six hours and we still shipped four cases to people who had asked to skip.

That week I asked if I could sit in on the next release, and then on somebody else's, and then on eleven more. Over roughly two years I spent release weeks in tasting rooms and pack areas in California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Virginia and the Finger Lakes. I taped labels. I read the sheet on the office door listing which states were a problem. I watched a shipping lead recite volume caps from memory because there was nowhere else to keep them. I learned that the release is not one job, it is five jobs that all have the same deadline, and that the workbook is where all five collide.

CellarShip is my answer to that collision, and it is deliberately narrow. It does not want to be your point of sale, your accounting system, your email marketing tool or your compliance filer. It handles the release: the allocation, the member window where holds and skips and pickup switches arrive, the state checks that stop a case before it reaches a carrier, and the paper that comes out at the end. Everything I was tempted to add, I asked one question about first: does this help somebody get the truck loaded correctly on Friday? If the answer was no, it stayed out.

How I work with wineries

I onboard clubs myself. Every winery that starts with CellarShip gets a working session with me on the call, and I do not hand that off to a script. We import your real member list, build your real tier rules, and then run your next release together with me watching the board while you click. I have found that the first release is where every assumption breaks: the tier that has an exception nobody documented, the four members who pay by check, the family that has three addresses and one card. Those are not edge cases in a wine club, they are Tuesday.

I also keep a standing rule about feature requests. If two unrelated wineries ask for the same thing in the same quarter, it goes on the build list with their names attached, and I tell them when it ships. If one winery asks for something that only makes sense in their building, I say no and explain why. Small operators have been sold enough software that grew until it stopped fitting them, and I would rather lose a sale than become that.

Experience and expertise

  • Two years of on site release week observation across thirteen wineries in six US states, from 180 member clubs to a 2,400 member multi label estate.
  • Fifteen years building operational software for businesses where the deadline is physical: a truck leaving, a door opening, a case going on a pallet.
  • Working knowledge of direct to consumer wine shipping in the United States: volume caps, permit renewals, adult signature requirements, and the states that accept no direct shipment at all.
  • Founder of MLJ, SASU, the French company that publishes CellarShip and every other product in this small portfolio.

How this product is built and maintained

State shipping rules are reviewed on a fixed schedule, four times a year, and again whenever a state publishes a change that affects volume limits or permit conditions. Each rule in the system carries the date it was last checked, and you can see that date from the compliance queue. When something changes, wineries whose shipping states are affected get an email before the next release window opens, not after.

On the writing side, every page on this site is drafted by me and reviewed against a plain standard: no number appears unless it comes from real usage or from a source I can point to, and no claim is made about what the software does that I have not watched a winery do with it. Prices on this site are the prices you pay. If a page becomes wrong because the product changed, the page changes in the same week.

Uptime, backups and data export are my responsibility, not a shared one. Club data is exportable at any time in formats you can open without us. If CellarShip ever stops operating, every customer gets a full archive and ninety days of notice, because a club list is the most valuable thing a small winery owns and it should never be trapped inside a vendor.

What I am accountable for

If a shipment goes out that should have been held, I want to know within the hour, and I will tell you plainly whether it was a rule we had wrong or a setting that was misread. I answer support email personally on business days, and the reply comes from a person who has stood on a pack line. That is the promise, and it is the only one I make in writing.

Published articles

Everything I have written for Cellar & Club, the CellarShip magazine on club shipping, compliance and the tasting room, is listed here with its publication date.

Contact the author

Write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com with your winery name and your next release date. If you want to see the release board with your own numbers, the fastest path is the request form on the home page, and if you are still deciding, the pricing section lists exactly what each plan includes.