To cut or not to cut ? Advice needed for a 2nd year plant.

I live in sunny San Diego and I started this Nugget last spring. It didn't grow very fast the first year as I was primarily concentrating on developing the root base. I ended up cutting most of the bines back several times but I left one to see how tall it would get. Being that it doesn't get very cold here, it survived the winter (if you can call it that) so I decided to leave the bine up. Now that spring is approaching I'm unsure if I should continue to leave it up or cut it down.

I've never done this before so any advice would be much appreciated. I've included several pics below.

In some of these pics I pulled the soil back a bit so you can see some of the fresh bines that are going to sprout any day now.

I would cut it back and let the new growth climb. By doing this all of the new growth will be able to go through the full cycle and should provide you a nice crop. No reason to make the crown support growth that is just vegetation. Just my two cents, good luck.

thanks for the suggestion Nickeldeposit, I will cut it back tomorrow. is there a good rule of thumb on where I should actually make the cut? I've just been doing it willy-nilly in the past but would love to know if there is a specific place I should be making the cut.

I would cut all of the old growth to the ground and let maybe 4-6 of the new shoots climb the twine. Once you've picked the ones to let climb cut off all the rest of the shoots but maybe 2just in case you need to replace a climbing one if it breaks off.

Good Luck