Saccharum Resort and Spa

Saccharum stands on the site of a sugar cane mill at Calheta, and has handed the mill's words to the places that feed its guests. Alambique, the restaurant with the tasting menu, is named after the still that turned cane into aguardente, and the bar at the adults-only pool is Garapa, for the juice the cane gave up. RH+ Arquitectos stepped the building in levels after Madeira's farming terraces and planted its ledges and roofs, so that it reads as part of the mountain behind it. Inside, Nini Andrade Silva kept to the crop, in the greens of the cane, with photographs for headboards, cane stalks among them; the copper pool in the spa stands for a tank of honey, which makes it the one pool here that sounds fattening.

Recommended for couples and for families on Madeira's west coast, since each gets a pool of its own: the grown-ups at Garapa, the children theirs, with a playroom besides and the sandy beach by Calheta's marina next door. Three of the five pools are on the eighth floor, the infinity pool among them, lined with palms and loungers and running out towards the Atlantic; the Fly Lounge Bar is on the roof for the sunset. The room to ask for has Ocean in its name, for a balcony over the sea or over the marina and its headland. Days go out by road: twenty minutes' drive to Rabaçal for the Levada das 25 Fontes walk, or the hotel's transfer to Funchal, half an hour away. In Calheta, the Engenho da Calheta, one of the oldest sugar mills on the island, still makes cane honey and aguardente. The hotel's Engenho lays out the buffet; the one in town still does the work.