A blue wine called Hunter Blue made at Drayton's Family Wines

This from Herald wine writer John Lewis: “The Hunter Valley produces a wide range of wines, but the 163-year-old Drayton’s family winery at Pokolbin has just released something revolutionary – a blue wine”.

“The Drayton’s winemaking team blended wine from white semillon and verdelho grapes,” John said.

“They added some food colouring to create their eye-catching, electric blue, non-vintage Hunter Blue.”

John compared the creation to blue roses, which were produced in 2004 by a joint Australia-Japanese genetic engineering project.

“Blue wine has long been contemplated by producers worldwide,” John said.

“The first was finally produced recently by the Spanish Gik wine company in partnership with a Basque university.”

Drayton managing director John Drayton said his team asked themselves “why not do it, too?”.

Their creation – Hunter Blue – has a “residual sugar sweetness” and is aimed at introducing a younger generation to wine.

The blue plonk sells for $24 a bottle at the Drayton winery in Pokolbin and some bottle shops.

The sky may be blue, but the colour is not common in nature.

What about blueberries, you ask? They look blue to us, but colour purists say they are actually deep purple.

There are some blue flowers, fish, birds, butterflies and insects. That’s true enough. But there’s more to it.

"Blue is fascinating because the vast majority of animals are incapable of making it with pigments," said Yale ornithologist Rick Prum on NPR in 2014.

“Of all Earth's inhabitants with backbones, not one is known to harbour blue pigment,” the NPR story said.

“Even some of the most brilliantly blue things in nature – a peacock feather, or a blue eye, for example – don't contain a single speck of blue pigment.”

So, how can they look so blue? Prum says they have evolved with “a kind of optical technology to create this colour”.

“It's a trick of structure.”

Blue morpho butterflies are an example.

“The butterflies have a six-inch wingspan – one side a dull brown and the other a vibrant, reflective blue.

“The butterflies have tiny transparent structures on the surface of their wings that bounce light in just the right way to make them appear a vibrant blue that's so bright it almost hurts your eyes.

“But if you grind up the wings, the dust – robbed of its reflective prism structures – would just look grey or brown.”

That’s the scientific argument.

Here at Topics, we like to believe there’s a scarcity of blue in nature because the sky uses it all up.

This subject reminded us of the Blue Man Group.

The question was once asked: What exactly is Blue Man Group about? The answer: “Blue Man Group cannot be explained, it can only be experienced”.

But why did they pick the colour blue? Artistic director Michael Quinn explained it like this: “Blue just felt right on all counts. All other colours had some sort of connotation that we didn’t want. Green was alien or Martian, and it represents envy. Red is angry or has socio-political connections. Black and white have racial connotations. Yellow is jaundiced and sickly. Blue was perfect. It represents serenity, calmness, water – the stuff of life. It is neutral, vibrant and simple.”