If you've not heard of Verenti, you'd be forgiven. It's the house brand of the mighty mail order outfit Wiggle and this Substance II is a steel framed gravel machine that offers stonking value for money.

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To be fair, the Substance II managed to slip under our radar until a helpful Facebook fan asked if we'd mind testing it, so that's exactly what we're going to do. It's certainly an attractive proposition on paper too. While most other comparable bikes at this price come with cable disc brakes, Verenti have managed to get fully hydraulic SRAM Apex Hydro R stoppers on the bike for the £1,300 asking price. SRAM also provides the single front chainring crankset and Apex1 11spd transmission with a generous 10-42T spread on the cassette. 

At the heart of the bike there's a frame made from butted 4130 Cromoly steel and a carbon fibre fork with a tapered steerer. There are road-style flat mount fixtures for the brakes and there's a full complement of mudguard mounts plus rack at the rear too.

You also get through axles at either end, namely 12x100mm up front and 12x142mm at the rear. Interestingly enough for a steel frame, it's got a Press Fit bottom bracket rather than the more common threaded item.

One really nice touch that Verenti has gone the extra mile with is that the crank length, bar width and stem length vary with the frame size, starting small and scaling up as the rider gets bigger. As the extremes of bike sizing can often get treated with a bit of indifference, it's a nice thing to see.

Regardless of frame size, the bike rolls on chunky 37c tyres on 700c rims. Happily, both the WTB Riddler tyres and WTB Frequency Team i23 rims are tubeless ready, which is a good move if you want to drop a chunk of weight as well as being able to run low pressures with fewer puncture worries off road. Tipping our scales at 11.06kg for a 54cm frame, dropping a bit of weight wouldn't be a bad thing. You can also go full 'road plus' - or whatever it's being called at the moment - and stick 650b wheels with 47c tyres in there if you fancy, though that's not an option from stock.

As ever, we'll be putting in some serious miles over the next few months to find out just how the Verenti performs. Check back for the full review then...