Café du Cycliste Winter Gloves review: fantastically warm, but expensive and lack dexterity

Café du Cyclist is a French brand that makes a full range of cycling clothing, typically priced at the higher end of the spectrum. It's also a B Corp certified corporation and a member of 1% for the Planet. This means the company takes active measures to reduce carbon footprint above the B Corp qualifying level, and donates 1% of profits to environmental and sustainability charities and organisations.

Let's see how its winter gloves stand up to the elements...

Construction

The Café Du Cycliste Winter gloves are the brand’s deep winter and warmest offering.

They feature no chemical finishes for water repellency, and instead uses a HDry membrane laminated to the inner of the glove shell. This is designed to prevent water penetrating while allowing moisture vapor/excess heat to escape. This is then paired with a Primaloft Gold fleece inner for insulation without the addition of too much bulk. The blending of these thinner weatherproofing and insulating materials is also designed to help when using a smartphone touchscreen, a feature that many of the best winter cycling gloves offer.

Additional features include a double ripstop outer shell to reduce the chance of any tears or abrasions when riding off road. There is also a Velcro adjustable cuff strap, plus cushioned palms to aid comfort. Sizing comes in XS to XL, while it is only available in black.

The ride

Warmth is what these gloves should be all about - and they deliver. The Primaloft fleece lining is fantastic as relatively low bulk insulation. Using these gloves in temperatures ranging from -5 to 5˚C they’ve kept my hands toasty. I’d go as far to say that above 5˚C they become a little bit warm in dry weather. The breathability is okay, but that level of fleecing and weather repellent outer is always going to limit breathability a touch.

When it comes to the rain, the HDry membrane does a fantastic job at keeping the elements at bay. Water beads off the gloves even in heavy rain, which in turns stops any chance of windchill negatively impacting the temperature of your hands.

I have a tendency to get quite cold hands, and a problem I often have with deep winter gloves is the fit being a little too small, and wind chill penetrating. There was no such issue here, if anything the fit is a bit on the generous side allowing a bit more internal space for some added air insulation. I also appreciate that the outer features a ripstop material to boost longevity and enable them to be very usable for gravel riding.

I did find one slight downside to having such good insulation and slightly spacious sizing is that tactility is a bit limited. Using both Shimano mechanical shifters and Di2, I didn’t have issues with shifting or miss-shifting per se, but sometimes it took a little more time to find exactly the right button or lever. It also made getting specific items out of rear pockets a little harder. Saying that though, using zips and opening energy bars was still perfectly doable.

A few practical features on these gloves that I really do like are the Velcro cuffs and the pull tabs. The Velcro helps keep them very secure against any jersey or jacket sleeve so that cold air doesn’t get up the sleeves at all. They also don’t leave any bits of Velcro exposed when fastened, and didn’t grab onto any other thermal items of clothing or stitching when I put them through the wash.

The pull tabs on the fingers make them a little bit easier to remove when you’ve got back from a cold ride, even though I never had an issue with cold fingers with these gloves. However the touchscreen capabilities were a little hit and miss and they tended to work best in slightly warmer weather. In contrast, during sub-zero temperatures it was very difficult to get any heat transfer from the fingers to get my phone screen working.

Value & conclusion

Value wise, there’s no getting around the fact that these gloves are quite expensive, and a bit above what the general market price is for similar products. The likes of the Castelli Estremo gloves are very comparable performance wise, and come in at £125 rather than £135. The Universal Colours Primaloft deep winter gloves are even cheaper at £85 and feature similar technologies, but do feature a less sleek cuff.

The key thing with the Café Du Cycliste gloves is that the performance is exceptional; I’d go as far to say they are unmatched for warmth in deep winter riding. Tactility is as good as it can be for a glove this insulating, and better than the Castelli option. It’s also nice to see a company do a lot of things to actively reduce their environmental impact and carbon footprint. I’m personally happy to pay a bit over the odds to support this.