the difficulty of successfully and rapidly filtering finely divided ethylene - vinyl ester interpolymer particles containing at least about 30 % by weight of copolymerized vinyl ester from aqueous dispersion media is overcome by the addition of an anti - coalescing amount of a lower saturated aliphatic monohydroxyl alcohol such as ethanol or isopropanol to the aqueous dispersion media accompanied by , or followed with , agitation prior to recovering the interpolymer particles therefrom . maintaining the filtered ethylene - vinyl ester interpolymer particles in the alcohol - wet condition resists the tendency of the particles to coalesce into unmanageable agglomerates , formation of which otherwise tends to limit or even preclude the use of the interpolymer with respect to some applications . solid phase alcoholysis of the alcohol - wet ethylene - vinyl ester interpolymer filter cake is also disclosed .