Bill Pullman lowers his voice when he confesses he's not really a wine guy. Not his fault.

"I lost my sense of smell when I was in my early 20s. So, it affects my ability to really determine the nuances. It's like golfing for me, I can only joke at it or cheat," the actor said in a recent call from Chateau Montelena in the northern end of Napa Valley. It's the setting and main location for the movie "Bottle Shock," opening today.

Pullman, 54, was holed up in a "beautiful corner office of this ancient stone-facaded building, with wine sitting on the table." In "Bottle Shock," he plays Jim Barrett, a real-life vintner and onetime lawyer who went to Napa Valley in 1972 to start what he hoped would be a world-class winery.

The movie is set in 1976 at a time when Barrett is sparring, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, with his own perfectionist streak, his son and other employees, his bankers and an Englishman (played by Alan Rickman) who arrives looking for California wines for a Paris tasting.

A showing of the movie had been held at the winery the night before. "We were sitting in the courtyard of Chateau Montelena watching a movie with scenes where trucks drive up to where you're sitting," and the temperature was ideal, with a soft breeze and an enthusiastic crowd.

"Bottle Shock" brought a crash course in winemaking for Pullman.

"That's the privilege of doing movies, you get to drop into somebody's world. ... I had to do it very fast. My avenue in was more about the agriculture, I found it fascinating," as growers analyze every inch of their acreage by soil type, sunlight conditions and the shadows coming off the mountains and how it changes by time of day or month.

"I have a ranch in Montana with my brother, and we're raising hay in this very crude version of all that. Anybody who's involved with agriculture, I think, it takes a lot of humility and everything to make it all work. They do it at such a refined level, it's fascinating."

He may lack the ability to detect a flowery bouquet or hint of vanilla oak, but he can appreciate the refined discussion of flavor, the history of winemaking that spans thousands of years, the bliss experts aim for, and the geography of Napa.

"It's amazing, just the gentleness of the hills that nestle the valleys where the wineries are and the vineyards that roundly kind of lift away and up and down in these symmetrical configurations. It's a very, very lucky corner of the world."

If Pullman is not a wine guy, "Bottle Shock" writer Ross Schwartz is. The 58-year-old resident of the Hollywood Hills has 130 cases stored in a Glendale building that's essentially been converted into a climate-controlled, capacious wine locker.

The son of Sherwood Schwartz, creator of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch," Ross Schwartz majored in English at the University of California, Berkeley, and then decided to go to law school.

"Nine years ago, I thought to myself, I don't really enjoy practicing law and I started writing scripts. If I don't do something now, it's never going to happen."

His fifth screenplay proved to be the foundation for "Bottle Shock," and he shares writing credit with director Randall Miller and producer Jody Savin. Joining them on the story credit is Schwartz's wife, Lannette Pabon.

They were dating in 2001 when Pabon, in an effort to catch up with Schwartz's vast knowledge about wine, took a wine history class at UCLA. That's where she learned about the Paris tasting that sets the movie into motion.

Schwartz was familiar with the 1976 competition but never thought it film fodder. Pabon suggested, "It's a story that needs to be told, and it cuts across generations and it's something our generation doesn't know and it's a great underdog story."

He thought it might need an extra injection of drama, perhaps a murder mystery. But once a friend who worked as a cellar rat for Chateau Montelena arranged some interviews with vintners and winemakers, Schwartz found his hook.

"Maybe 40 minutes into the discussion, Jim [Barrett] told me this crazy story about the wine. ... He thumped his hands on the table and pushed his chair back and said, 'I'll tell you your movie,' and then he started telling me this weird story," which provides a true-life surprise twist in the film.

Schwartz supplemented that with rich characters such as Gustavo Brambila, who co-founded a boutique winery called Gustavo Thrace Wines and is played by Freddy Rodriguez. The story was ripe with such characters, who had passion and determination and were immigrants or risk-takers.

The script serendipitously found its way to former Pittsburgher Marc Lhormer and his wife, Brenda, directors of the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, who signed on as producers. Schwartz then suggested Miller as director after seeing his movie "Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School."

Schwartz didn't inherit his love of wine from his parents, who never could understand his interest.

"When I was first writing it, 'Sideways' had not come out yet," he recalled. "I said to my dad, who is pretty good at judging American tastes, 'By the way, I'm writing this movie about wine,' and he said, 'Ross, I'll tell you, I know you are really interested in it but I just don't see it.' "

He was supportive of his writing, just not the topic. When "Sideways" made pinot noir the wine to drink and the movie to see, the elder Schwartz (now 92) suggested he fast-track the script.

Now that the cork is coming out of "Bottle Shock," Schwartz says moviegoers will learn something about that seminal Paris tasting, but it's almost incidental. "I want to show that wine is not this big, stuffy, hoity-toity thing. It's fun. And it tastes good."