Is it 'a bright orange of the sunrise' or 'the bright orange of the sunrise'?

Question

Wisconsin, where the hills roll like green waves to the horizon, where the cheese is a bright / the bright orange of the sunrise, and the winters are long and dark as death.
_{(Source: Dungeons & Dragons: Origins)}

Apparently the correct answer is 'the bright', but wouldn't they both work?

'The bright orange of the sunrise' assumes that the sunrise has a specific colour to it, but I believe there are multiple shades of orange in a sunrise, therefore 'a bright orange of the sunrise' should also be correct, shouldn't it?

Answer 1

In a comment, Peter Shor wrote:

English speakers don't say "a [color] of the [noun]". Evidence from Ngrams. The sky can be multiple shades of blue, and the grass multiple shades of green, but we only say "the blue of the sky" and "the green of the grass".

Answer 2

In a comment, FumbleFingers wrote:

This is a literary context, where the cheese is the [same] bright orange [as the bright orange colour] of the sunrise, It would be syntactically invalid to have the indefinite article (a) after the cheese is...

Answer 3

In a comment, Jack O’Flaherty wrote:

You are trying to describe the color of cheese in a concrete way. It doesn't make sense to compare its color to some vague sunrise shade; it only makes sense as "the bright orange...".