OFFICINA BATTAGLIN PORTOFINO GRAVEL BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO ADMIRE A STUNNING BICYCLE

CUSTOM, LIMITED NUMBERS, LUGGED STEEL, INTERNAL ROUTING, HIDDEN BINDER, EIGHT-MONTH WAIT... AND OH SO SHINY!

- MATT PHILLIPS

All bikes are beautiful, but some are truly stunning. Officina Battaglin – or just Battaglin, if you’re in the know – is a brand that specialises in the latter.

Bill Strickland, Bicycling’s big boss, thinks the Battaglin Power+ is one of the best road bikes ever. But that model, which he reviewed in 2017, is in the rear-view. The Battaglin offering today is split into two lines: one is a mix of faithful recreations and reimaginings of the brand’s storied lugged-steel racing frames from its past; the other is an altogether more unique series of frames, with the Portofino moniker.

The Portofino models are some of the most wonderfully audacious frames around. They seem to imagine a world where titanium, carbon and aluminium frames never existed. Their shape, styling and features are much like those of modern carbon race superbikes, except that they’re rendered in steel and joined with lugs. And they’re made in-house at Battaglin in Marostica, Italy, instead of in a large factory in Asia.