The just completed Giro d’Italia is the most beautiful and often most suspenseful grand tour in the world. No small part of this is the fact that it’s in Italy, and while the French countryside is no slouch when it comes to looks, there’s an indefinable quality about the rolling hills and white roads that stimulates the “I want to ride there” nodes just that little bit more.

Add in wine, coffee, vintage bikes, period dress and the most badass moustaches west of Mexico and suddenly the must-ride list is a little longer. The Italian chapter of Deus ex Machina infiltrated the wet strade bianche at last year’s l’Eroica held in Chianti and came out the other side dirty, tired, tipsy, and spiritually sated.