Not knowing what zone you're in, my experience might not be comparable.

I have one culinary sage that is 5 or 6 yrs old. It's generally about 2 foot tall, very shrub-like, and it's lower branches are pretty woody. It's outdoors in the ground year around.

In the Spring the leaves will sometimes be shrivelled depending on how hard a winter, sometimes they're fine if the winter was relatively mild. Either way, I have pruned it back hard the last couple of years, leaving nothing but woody stubs and the plant at about one-half to two-thirds its original height.

To my amazement it has come back fine in each case. However, I was just about to shovel prune it the first year I did a drastic pruning and found that it sprouted new growth rather late in the spring, so it got spared.

Oh, just one other thing...

I pruned down to the level where the stems were still green inside, not completely woody. Even if you prune off all the foliage, you want to keep the green and flexible growth areas.

Thank you for the excellent advice. I'm excited to see what will happen.

thankyou. I am in zone 3 north east coast.