Compare a pour over at home with a cheap supermarket brand and a espresso at a fancy coffee shop. You can say they all deliver the same “pleasure” to you and it they are interchangeably experiences, but probably they effectively taste different. Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense.
I mean, there's two comments proposing that already, but why would that be the case only for high-ceremony drinks (coffee, wine...).
To your question. I think that’s where the economic incentives for creating and selling different variations are.
Tea also, but tea gets it from different plants.
I can taste differences in hot chocolates, btw, solid bar chocolates too. Hershey’s milk chocolate bars in the US are horrible to my taste. Any brand milk chocolate bar where I live (Brazil), tastes much better. Even the supermarket cheap ones. But more fancy chocolate bars do taste different.
In my case, a cheap chocolate bar (that is not US Hersheys) is good enough for me, so I don’t care about the fancier ones. But they do taste different.
Edit: I do believe there are marketing and status incentives to make a big deal about the difference in this high-end stuff and there is a game of “pantomime” in place as you say. Definitely is there. It just isn’t a 100% “emperor has no clothes” situation.
That’s the scenario for “high-end bottled water” in my opinion. They all taste the same and is 100% marketing
I couldn't care less for the regular brands, but usually really enjoy higher end mineral water.