Petrus: The 19th Century
It is only during the course of the 19th century that Petrus became established as a fully-fledged wine domaine, and it begins to appear with greater regularity in the relevant wine trade documents. A very early reference comes from the Tastet et Lawton archives, which note the existence of the estate in 1837. Otherwise it is to my usual source, the Bordeaux bible known as Cocks et Féret, that I turn. In the 1868 edition Pétrus (the old spelling again) was listed third of all the Pomerol estates, behind Vieux Château Certan and Château Trotanoy which are ranked first and second respectively. The owner is noted to be an Arnaud at this time, and there is an admirable production of 42 to 45 tonneaux (one tonneau being the equivalent of four modern-day barriques).
The identity of this particular Arnaud is not clear; he or she is surely a relative or descendant of Antoine, but the exact connection is not certain. Having trawled through literally hundreds of references to the Arnaud family in Pomerol I have uncovered only one possible candidate, one Jean Arnaud, born in 1816 in Abzac, a commune northeast of Pomerol, just before you reach Coutras. Jean is noted to have died on July 14th 1881, at Pétrus, at the age of 65 years. On the recording of his death he was noted to be a proprietor, surely of the Pétrus vines. He had married a girl by the name of Jeanne Dumas (1814-1892), who also died at Pétrus, indicating that the two lived here together. It is therefore surely this Jean Arnaud who was the proprietor in 1868.
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