It’s a breeze to learn – just 5 colors and 4 numbers. The colors represent a dominant flavor molecule. The numbers represent the residual sugar content, from 1 (very dry) to 4 (sweet)

Green – Anise
(Cool, herbaceous, minty, grassy)

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Yellow – Saffron
(Rich, creamy, buttery, and luscious)

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Orange – Capsaicin
(Hot and spicy, savoury, and aromatic)

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Red – Umami (beef)
(Chewey, beefy, concentrated)

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Blue – Maple
(Sweet, butterscotch, toffee, salted caramel, chocolate)

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The foods in each category pair perfectly with the wines in each category because they share the same dominant flavor.

The Numbers are easy – from 1 – 4, 1 being the driest wine with the least amount of residual sugar left over from fermentation, and 4 being the sweetest, with the most residual sugar left over from fermentation. The numbers apply to the wine.

So for example, a Green -1 is a dry wine and a Blue 4 is a sweet wine. Note that sweet is not the same as fruity. Some wines are fruit-forward, as they are made from ripe grapes that get lots of sun, but they still finish dry. Juicy, fruity flavors come from the ripeness of the fruit. How dry or sweet a wine is comes from the R.S. (residual sugar, which is the sugar in the fruit that remains as the grapes are fermented into alcohol). The higher the alcohol content, the lower the residual sugar. A wine that is 8% alcohol is sweeter than a wine that is 14% alcohol by volume (ABV). Since this percentage is required on the label, it is a good way to estimate the sweetness of the wine.

For our purposes, number 1 is very dry, numbers 2 and 3 are off-dry (not bone dry, but aromatic and dry), and 4 is sweet.