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I agree show is (usually) better than tell. I don't agree show is necessarily much longer.
In crich70's examples the show version is much longer but it's also got a lot more info in it. You could equally write a tell version with all that detail and it would also be long.
The real question is how much of that information is needed at that point. There's a lot in that show passage that tells us what kind of man John is - he drinks whiskey not beer, he pours from a decanter, the swear words he chooses and so on. Near the beginning of the book, or after John has just been introduced this is useful info. As part of an ending it's superfluous. We should already know John by that stage.
Now maybe that's just because crich70 was thinking more of show v tell than endings when constructing his example, nevertheless my point is that the "information" in the ending should be that which is needed to satisfyingly wrap up the story and no more.
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