The Winery No One Wants - Except Edwin, Cherie and Donal
After reviewing the FOIL documents, it turns out Mr. Collins was, as expected, on Team Williams.
There is nothing quite like the slow-motion humiliation of a small-town official caught in the amber of his own convenience. Donal Collins, supervisor of a municipality that could fit inside a Manhattan city block with room to spare, has spent the better part of a year making FOIL compliance feel like a personal affront. Three missed deadlines. A lawyer dispatched on a Saturday — a Saturday — to insist that no, no, this was not constructive denial of access. My reply? That’s for a judge to decide.
The documents, when they finally materialized, were almost poignant in their thinness. Karen Carpenter thin, as they say. One mandatory disclosure for 2025, filed in March of 2026. And what it failed to disclose was the one thing everyone in town is already whispering about: the relationship between Collins and the Williams family, who claim 83 acres of farmland — all but the vineyard parcel, conveniently — is worked by Collins himself. Or so the story goes.
This was already simmering beautifully before the FOIL battle even began. In August 2025, a board member Jon Wapner had the temerity to email Collins directly, requesting a workshop discussion about what he politely characterized as a conflict of interest. He wanted it on the September 4th agenda. It never appeared. One imagines the agenda-setting process as something less than rigorous.
Meanwhile, the Williams were moving with the confidence of people who know exactly which levers to pull. Their application to enter Ag District 10 was already in motion, and Collins — who had announced he would not be voting on the matter — was cheerfully telling the Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board that yes, yes, farming was absolutely occurring at 509 Bashford Road. The investigative rigor behind that determination? A drive-by. Literally. A drive past the property and a note confirming: farm.
The county, as required by law, notified Collins that 509 Bashford Road had applied for inclusion on November 7th. He did not share this with the board. His reasoning, offered with the weary confidence of a man who has long confused his own interests with the public’s, was that he didn’t think he needed to.
The recusal, when it finally came, arrived without explanation. No rationale. No acknowledgment of the slow-building controversy, the reporting, the questions multiplying like kudzu. Late and unexplained, as so much of this has been.
The stakes, it turns out, are not small. With 509 Bashford inside an agricultural district, the Williams gain a significant legal cudgel — the ability to approach the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and effectively tie the town’s hands on the vineyard. This, one suspects, was always the destination. The scenic route just happened to run through Donal Collins.
The Fox Hill Vineyard file is a remarkable document of entitlement: flawed applications, neighbor opposition exceeding 60 letters, more than 200 signatures. A normal applicant might recalibrate. The Williams are not recalibrating.
A source in California who has worked with Ed and Cherie Williams offered this, unprompted: moving across the country to pursue their medical careers was simply the logistics. Working with them was always, always about money, and how to make more of it.
I cannot say I was surprised.
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