Water bottles, or "bidons" if you're European or a fancy American, are one of the most iconic of Cycling's identifiers. There's no one object, besides a bicycle itself, that is so solely Cycling specific.
What is now the plastic, nipple-topped billboard we know and suckle today started exactly as you might suppose: as a leather bag strapped to one's handlebars. Then for a bit, they were made of glass, then aluminum sealed with corks.
The modern method of mounting bottles inside the frame triangle seems quite obvious today but didn't first occur until the 1939 Tour de France, when René Vietto mounted one of his bottles to his down tube.
Amazingly, the down tube mounted bottle wasn't widely adopted for another 15 years. And it wasn't until the 60s that the bar-mounted bottle cage was finally abandoned. By then plastic was replacing aluminum as the bottle of choice. Apparently, w cyclists are very slow to adapt.
It wasn't until the 1980s that the humble bidon became a bidonerfly: Coca-Cola sponsored the Tour and all the riders got wonderfully red bottles with the iconic Coke branding on the side. Suddenly bottles had an even more important reason to exist than keeping cyclists from collapsing of thirst: they were great looking.
Today we appreciate our water bottles in a way our ancestors did not. They're not just bottles, they're bling. We buy them in colors and patterns. We emblazon them with Native American artwork and cartoon donuts. They can be color coordinated with our bikes or purposefully clashing. They are as essential to The Look as sock length and tire width.
We here at Ritte take bottles very seriously. We may not be artistic enough to make them unicorn themed, but it's important to us that they look great and allow you to spray water on your face in slow motion. So for the first time in a few years, we've designed some bottles. Our gift to you for the Holidays is the chance to slide a handsome Ritte bottle into your downtube cage while thinking about the old deer hide your great-grandfather had to suck from. You don't want that. Slow motion satchel water sprays aren't cool they're just weird. Unless you're Kevin Costner maybe.
Look for our bottles and other softgoods in our Store.
