My bad. I read the word basic in the first post and though he was taking about a base-catalyzed esterification. One reason why chemists should only use the word basic when they mean alkaline and not when they mean simple!
[edit: on second thought, you wouldn't want water around in a base-catalyzed esterification, so I guess you wouldn't want to use 95% EtOH for a base-cat esterification in the first place. So yeah, I'm just completely wrong.]