All wines entered in the Amateur Competition are evaluated, blind and by consensus, by the same top-rated professional judges overseeing the Commercial Wine Competition. These judges are chosen from a broad range of industry experts and include those trained and certified by the American Wine Society, many who are current or former home wine makers.

Judges use the same guidelines and evaluation techniques that are applied to the Commercial Wine Competition with one important difference: the score sheets and critique comments are returned to the amateur winemakers. These written comment sheets are often more valuable to the amateur winemaker than winning an award, as they can include suggestions on how to make improvements or enhance the characteristics of the wines. This very useful service making the AWS Amateur Competition an instructive tool as well as an awards program. In addition, the Society provides a database for home winemakers, tracking progress from year to year.