Originally, a vineyard, the estate was owned by the Arnaud family since the end of the 18th century, and the name first appears in records from 1837. In the 1868 edition of "Cocks &amp; Féret", under listing "Crus bourgeois et 1ers artisans," Pétrus was ranked behind Vieux Château Certan and alongside Château Trotanoy. Some vintages of this period were labelled Petrus-Arnaud. At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878, Pétrus won a gold medal, at a time when such an event had very significant results, establishing a selling price at the level of a Médoc second growth, the first wine of Pomerol to do so.