Sarto Asola frameset

The Sarto Asola is a lightweight, smooth-riding frameset that handles beautifully. Priced at £3,600 it's certainly not cheap, but you can have this Italian beauty made to measure and built with the features you want.

Sarto is what you could class as a boutique brand. You won't have seen many, if any, of its frames around. All Sarto frames are handmade in Italy, only about 2,500 per year. Compare that with Trek, for example: about 1.6 million bikes per year. Mass production, it ain't.

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Most Sarto frames are made to measure, although ours is a standard model. That said, the geometry (see below) was good for me with a 570mm seat tube, 580mm effective top tube, 193mm head tube and 73-degree frame angles. As I said, though, you can have the exact geometry that you want thanks to Sarto's bespoke service.

Tube-to-tube

The Asola is built from M55J and M46J carbon-fibre tubes that are assembled into a frame using a tube-to-tube technique.

Most carbon fibre frames are made in moulds, but tube-to-tube is an entirely different way of doing things. The tubes are cut to length – in Sarto's case, usually lengths dictated by the individual's requirements – put onto a jig and bonded together. Then the frame undergoes a laminating process to join the tubes together more strongly, making the frame safe and efficient.

According to Sarto, 'The resin that remains in the joints ensures that the laminated frames are generally more comfortable than monocoque structures, maintaining their rigidity and performance.'

Sarto then applies an outer layer of carbon fibre to seal the laminations and provide the finish. In this case, the outer layer is a 1K carbon weave.

Compared with using a mould, tube-to-tube is a labour-intensive process, but it allows you to choose your own geometry and the bottom bracket standard you want. You can also opt for either a standard or an integrated seatpost, and have the frame built for electronic or mechanical shifting, or have it compatible with both. Additionally, the frame can be finished in whatever colour you like.

Quietly dignified

The Asola looks quite unassuming, all straight lines and round tubes in the front triangle. Fair enough, the down tube is pretty meaty and the head tube is tapered, but on the whole this frame has a sober appearance, quietly dignified rather than shouting about its status.

The stays depart from the restrained script and ad lib a little. The chainstays are boxy in profile while the seatstays are slim and sculpted, the idea being to add some comfort to the back end.

The bottom bracket on our review bike is Press-Fit 30 although, as I mentioned, you can have a different standard if you like. Rather than going for an integrated seatpost, we have a 27.2mm diameter seatpost instead.

Our bike arrived built up with a complete Campagnolo Chorus groupset that we'll be reviewing separately. As you probably know, Chorus is the third tier groupset in the Italian brand's lineup, sitting below Super Record and Record. The wheels are from Campag too: Shamal Ultras shod with Continental Grand Prix 4000 tyres in a 25mm width.

In this guise the Asola hit the road.cc Scales of Truth at 6.94kg (15.3lb). That's pretty damn light. Sarto claims a raw (unpainted) Asola frame weighs 700g. That's really, really light.

Floating

The Asola rides like a lightweight bike too, floating up to speed gracefully when you turn up the power dials. What has really surprised me about this frameset is that it combines that light weight with an ability to remain totally unfazed when you get out of the saddle and really hammer, be that on a fiendish climb or in an all-out sprint. The Asola doesn't really look like it's going to offer particularly high frame stiffness, but it does.

Some frames just look rigid: the down tube is a colossal scaffold pole of a thing and the chainstays appear to have been fashioned from a spare part for a JCB. The Asola is more elegant and sophisticated than that, but still holds firm when you sling it about.

There are certainly bikes out there that are more rigid around the bottom bracket (Sarto claims that its own Dinamica is, for a start) but the Asola feels great on a power climb – you know, one of those short, sharp hills when you just want to get up on the pedals, fire your quads, and blast over the top. Some frames will squirm about in that situation, drifting from side to side just enough to put you off the job in hand, but the Asola soaks it all up.

Descending is a real pleasure too, because the Asola has excellent manners, politely going where you ask it to without getting too distracted by road conditions. It's not one of those lightweight bikes that bounces about and does its own thing when the road surface is less than perfect, which is a good job because the road surface is nearly always less than perfect.

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The overall ride quality is up there with the very best. The Asola doesn't isolate you from the road to the same degree as some endurance bikes out there, but on the other hand it doesn't feel the need to tell you about every little detail either. It handles things on a need-to-know basis, and that's cool with me. A happy medium, I'd say, and I'd have no problem recommending it for even the longest of rides.

This is an exceptionally good frameset all-round. I'm really struggling to think of anything negative to say about it. There's the small matter of the price, of course, but if you can stomach that, you're in for a treat here.

Verdict

Exceptional carbon fibre frameset that's made to measure in Italy; a superb climber with an outstanding ride quality