How is argan oil traditionally pressed?

Argan oil is one of those things travellers buy without ever grasping the staggering labour behind it, and a visit to a women's cooperative in the Souss valley, in the argan belt around Essaouira and Agadir, changes that forever. The argan tree grows almost nowhere else on earth, gnarled and thorny, and famously goats climb into its branches to eat the fruit. The fruit itself is a small yellow-green drupe; once it falls and dries, inside is a hard nut, and inside that nut — protected by one of the toughest shells in nature — are the precious kernels. Everything that follows is done by hand by Berber women, and it is humbling to watch.

First the dried fruit pulp is removed, then comes the sound that fills every cooperative: the rhythmic tap-tap of women cracking the nuts. Each woman sits with a flat stone in her lap and a smaller round stone in her hand, and she strikes the nut at exactly the right angle to split the shell without crushing the kernels inside. There is no machine that does this well — the shell is too hard and irregular — so it is all skill and repetition, hour after hour. Out come small, almond-like kernels, pale and oily. It takes a punishing amount of fruit for a tiny yield; roughly thirty kilos of fruit, and hours of cracking, for a single litre of oil.

For culinary argan oil — the nutty, amber one you drizzle and dip bread into — the kernels are then gently roasted over a low fire, which is what gives the oil its warm, toasty, hazelnut aroma. (Cosmetic argan oil skips the roasting, so it stays pale and almost odourless.) The roasted kernels go into a stone hand-mill, a quern, which the women turn slowly to grind them into a thick brown paste. Then they knead that paste by hand with a little warm water, working it patiently, and as they press and fold, the oil begins to weep out — pure, golden, and astonishingly fragrant.

The oil is left to settle, decanted off the residual paste, and that is it: no chemicals, no heat extraction, just stones, water and women's hands. The leftover press-cake is mixed with ground almonds and honey to make amlou, so nothing is wasted. When I take guests to a genuine cooperative, the point is not just to buy a bottle but to sit, crack a few nuts yourself, and feel in your wrists why real argan oil costs what it does — and why buying it directly from the women keeps that ancient, back-breaking craft, and their livelihoods, alive.