Regrettably @waytoomuchstuff has misdirected himself.  He suggests that because confirmation bias is not present in wine tasting, it cannot be present in listening to music.  His statement is an inductive proof - that is, the proof of a proposition relying upon a different proposition that has not been proved.

The result of course is rubbish.  Confirmation bias exists in all fields - why shouldn't it.

In fact the record shows that confirmation bias is present in wine tasting to a far greater extent than in listening to music.

There have been legions of published accounts of confirmation bias in wine tasting. Almost certainly the most famous case is that of Rudy Kurniawan a young conman from Indonesia who operated as a wine forger of the greatest wines in the world, mainly in the USA between 2002 and 2012.  For 10 years and with probably tens of thousands of bottles he conned all the wine experts, auction houses, collectors and even wine makers with forged first growths imitating the greatest wines of the world.  Some collector experts lost up to $5,000,000 each.  They were all convinced the wines were genuine just because of the labels stuck to the bottles and so believed what they tasted was the real thing - pure confirmation bias.

It is not known how much Kurniawan collected in all from these frauds, carried out in great number over 10 years, but it was certainly in excess of $20,000,000.  He was tried in 2013 and sentenced to 8 years.  The very interesting story can be read in 'In Vino Duplicitas' by Peter Hellman and is being made as a feature film.

So the OP is not making any point, save to confirm confirmation bias is alive and well in all fields.

@thyname    Thank you for your response.  I will take your comment on my username as a compliment.  I did choose it carefully.

I certainly did NOT say that in my camp everything always sounds the same.  This is not black and white.  It is not a case of you either hear differences or you don't.  You miss my point.  Of course I often hear differences when I make modifications to my system.  I am sure I suffer from confirmation bias too.  Certainly when drinking wine.

We have all found that sometimes our system sounds different on different days, even when warmed up to the same extent, at the same temperature and humidity and listening to the same source material.  Some people say their system sounds different in the dark to with the lights on.  These are all subjective impressions we get, resulting from our mood and all sorts of other transitory personal conditions, many of which we cannot know or identify, still less quantify. 

All I am saying is that I don't know to what extent the differences I hear and taste are differences that truly exist and to what extent they are manufactured in my head, entirely unbenown to me.  There is no way of knowing.  I am afraid this truth is incontrovertible and entirely well known to psychologists.

@brianh61     Your wine shop is only trying to be helpful of course by recommending a 'similar' bottle.

Many will agree with me that as a very delicate grape Pinot Noir can present very variably.  As a Burgundy drinker of many bottles experience, I have certainly found this.  Even in a case of 12 bottles, without there being any question of a 'fault' I often find noticeable differences between bottles.  This is not a confirmation bias as all the lables are the same and all the wine was bottled at almost the same moment.  It may be that the differences between the wines you requested of your shop and those recommended were less than those I have encountered in a single case.

A more amusing example of a shop offering something different to what was requested came a long time ago from a schoolfriend of mine who has rather large feet.  He went into a shoeshop and asked for a size 12.  The server came back and said 'sorry we don't have a 12 but we do have a large size 11'.

@thyname 

I make my purchasing decisions the same way as everyone else, not only by listening/tasting but by recommendation, research, review etc.

But to repeat - all I'm saying is we're all kidding ourselves if we think listening/tasting are entirely objective.

@pmiller115 

Horse race is a poor analogy.  Whilst there can be differing opinions before the race as no-one knows the winner, after the race there can only be one opinion because there is only one winner and everyone knows which horse (and rider) it is.

@pmiller115      Certainly you are entirely correct when it comes to subjective judgements.  My father used to say 'comparisons are odious'.  I don't know where he got that from,and it isn't heard much today, but should be.