Production of polysaccharides has long been associated with the technological, functional and health promoting benefits of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB). In particular, the capsular polysaccharides and exopolysaccharides (CPS and EPS) have been implicated in modulation of the rheological properties of fermented products. For this reason, screening and selection of exocellular polysaccharide producing LAB has been extensively carried out by academia and industry. To further exploit the ability of LAB to produce polysaccharides, an in-depth understanding of their biochemistry, genetics, biosynthetic pathways, regulation and structure-function relationships is mandatory. Here we will present our efforts comprising a multilevel approach to characterize at the systems level LAB producing polysaccharides. To this end, we combined high throughput experimentation and omics data, genetic features of the clusters and structural characterization of the polysaccharides with computational approaches for data integration. An in-depth understanding of polysaccharide biology in connection to application is expected to facilitate the selection and improvement of LAB strains with superior texturing properties.