Features

Italian brand Northwave is 20 years old this year so we paid them a visit last week to wish them a happy birthday, check out next year’s range and take a look around their place in Onigo, near Treviso.

Northwave started out in 1993 making mountain bike shoes, but soon expanded into the road market. Since then, their shoes have been worn by the likes of Mario Cipollini, Tom Boonen, and Philippe Gilbert, along with Team Leopard Trek and then Radioshack Nissan Trek.

The future is aero. Look at many of the bikes and products released in the last couple of years and it's easy to see the industry is focusing on aerodynamics. More and more manufacturers now stepping up to offer aero road bikes, arguably the biggest trend in road cycling right now, so we've rounded up 12 of the fastest for you.

The French call it terroir. It doesn’t really have an equivalent in English, but describes the effect of soil, climate, aspect and general growing conditions have on grapes and the wines they produce. It’s not too hard to distinguish in some cases, most of us who like a glass can, if pushed, taste the difference between an Australian Shiraz and a French Syrah (the same grape) even if that bottle of Côte du Rhone doesn’t have the grape name written on it anywhere.