Back at the start of the year Italian custom frame builder Officina Battaglin showed us their unique lugged, oversized steel Portofino road bike. Now a special edition of the bike gets a beautiful Cromovelato finish, befitting of those big polished lugs, letting you pick the reflective color to finish your modern Italian custom road bike, and with a special bonus for a limited time…
Battaglin Portofino Premium modern lugged steel road bike
While I dig the modern, high-performance take on a lugged steel bike, to be honest the matte mocha brown of the standard Portofino just didn’t strike me. A flashy bike like this needed a fitting finish, and Officina Battaglin realized that too. That’s why they have worked hard on scaling up the Cromovelato finish they previously only offered on limited edition frames, to let Portofino Premium buyers pick the color of their choosing.
Unique Cromovelato chrome colors
The result is a stunning, transparent color over polished chrome look. The Italian Cromovelato finish is especially labor intensive, requiring complete mirror-polishing of the entire frame, then chrome plating, then overpainting the chrome with a thin transparent lacquer.
Battaglin offers the Portofino Premium in 12 Cromovelato colors, plus apparently a three-color Italian tricolore too.
Custom fit
Battaglin’s bikes are made-to-order and come with custom geometry so you get a bike individually fit to you. For the Portofino Premium, Officina Battaglin developed their own proprietary lugs that allow for modern road racing geometry, still with the ability to make minor tweaks. The horizontal toptube frame is officially available in 1cm size increments. But it is actually dialed in down to the millimeter as needed to make sure every buyer gets the perfect fit – taking into account individual riding style, personal needs & actual rider measurement.
Tech details
The handmade, lugged Portofino Premium features modern oversized, triple-butted Columbus Spirit HSS tubing, with an exclusive to Battaglin lug set, Columbus stays & tapered headtube.
The rim brake only frame gets 130mm QR axle spacing, an internal tapered 1.5″ headset, BSA threaded bottom bracket, integrated full carbon fork, and internal cable routing. Optimized for 25mm tires, Battaglin says 28mm tires will also fit. The Portofino Premium is sold primarily as a frameset, but Battaglin can also spec out a complete modern bike build, as well with a groupset of your choosing.
Pricing, availability & special launch reward
The new Portofino Premium frameset with its shiny Cromovelato finish sells for 3200€, a sizable premium over the regular painted model which required much less hand finishing (but was still available in custom colors, too). With that of course, you also get a full Battaglin custom fit. But also, if you order a bike before the end of August, they will also send you a limited edition replica Tour de France polka dot jersey hand-signed by Giovanni Battaglin, commemorating the 40th anniversary of his title as the best climber in the 1979 Tour.
Every bike is made-to-measure, with your geometry dialed in together with consultation from Giovanni Battaglin himself – said to be the only grand Tour winner actually managing a bike brand in person. That usually means it will take around 6 weeks to build your bike and ship it anywhere in the world once you settle geometry and finish details.
